


before & after

by endoftheline7



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, HP: EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Era, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-23 06:04:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12500480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endoftheline7/pseuds/endoftheline7
Summary: Loving Harry James Potter was this: soft, extended longing, stretching out forever in his heart, only faltered by the knowledge thathavingHarry Potter's love would be entirely different. It would be bright and coarse and real. It would be that brash Gryffindor nerve translated into feeling, and Harry's hands would be rough when they cupped Draco's face and his lips would be bitten raw and chapped with cold and perfect, perfect, perfect.It would be. If he had it.





	1. Chapter 1

_before_

As a boy, Draco had never given all that much thought to romance. He'd forgotten it was a concern at _all,_ until Blaise Zabini notified him of Pansy Parkinson's dreadful crush on him their third week at Hogwarts, and he tried not to be thoroughly disgusted. He didn't mention a word of it to her, and by their sixth week, she'd moved on to mooning over Theodore Nott instead.

Valentine's day at Hogwarts passed quickly during Draco's first year. At eleven, love wasn't exactly at the forefront of his mind. He noticed, of course, the longing looks thrown across the Great Hall between the older students- he wasn't as dense as _Potter,_ who didn't even appear to realise it was Valentine's day at _all._ But it simply wasn't of any interest to him. No, Draco was instead drawn to the push and pull of his rivalry with Harry Potter, something that seemed to leave him far more breathless than any thought of Pansy's pretty hair or Daphne's sly smile.

Draco watched Crabbe stare at the back of Padma Patil's head in Herbology, and wondered if there something was wrong with him, fleetingly, before being distracted by the sound of Potter's name in passing conversation. The only discussion his classmates had been having all day was about each other, caught up in the fantasy of securing a significant other before their teenage years hit, and Draco was bored to death by the lot of it.

What did it matter that he'd never wanted anybody? He was old enough to want, certainly, but still young enough to not. Young enough not to realise.

“I suppose I'm just a late bloomer,” he overheard Pansy confessing tearfully to Daphne one evening the following week, and restrained the urge to scoff. One or two girls in their year resorting to bras didn't make her _late_ in any way, shape, or form, but he heard some truth in the words. Perhaps that was all he was. _Late_.

It wasn't as if he were the _only_ one: _Potter_ didn't appear to have any specific interest in anyone, as far as Draco knew. Unless it was Granger he wanted, if bushy hair and shrill diligence were what attracted him. Maybe it was _Weasley_ he liked- now _that_ was a thought. Were red hair and a large appetite really what the great Harry Potter looked for in a partner? It would certainly be a Gryffindor, or at least some Muggleborn or Blood traitor or something of the sort, so far from the class of wizard he _should_ _'ve_ been associating with.

Though… Potter and someone like Pansy: not quite a match made in heaven. Potter would likely fall victim to Pansy's woeful affections eventually, if only briefly, but Draco couldn't envision Potter reciprocating those feelings. Slytherins seemed to be nothing but an annoyance to him, far from anything he'd consider in terms of a relationship, let alone a marriage- one to continue the sacred Potter bloodline. Draco couldn't imagine that was something he cared about all that much.

But then, Draco didn't really know him at all.

 

***

 

Did late count if it lasted yet another year?

Valentine's day at Hogwarts was at its worst during Draco's second year. Pink plastered the walls from top to bottom: blushing flowers unfolding upon the arches of windows and origami hearts falling like rain. Draco felt rather sick to his stomach at the scene, head still swimming from the night before, when Fay Dunbar had cornered him after dinner and leaned precariously into his space, asking if he were going to send anybody a Valentine- Draco had blanched at the suggestive hope in her tone, and for a taut, terrifying moment, had thought she were about to kiss him. Her face had been startlingly close and her lips shiny with the over-application of lip gloss, and Draco hadn't felt a thing but terror.

Malfoy's were always dignified, except when they were running from pretty girls that wanted to kiss them.

His odd reaction had plagued him well into the night and remained fraught on his mind the next day. Fay shot him a glare from across the Great Hall at breakfast, confetti obscuring her face as it drifted down, and Draco only felt tired. Enough of worrying about girls and kissing, what could he do to antagonise Potter today? The year so far had been especially good in winding him up, watching his face contort in fury as Draco hurled insults at his friends, followed in his footsteps as Seeker and pushed and teased and snickered until Potter was glaring at him with those blazing green eyes, angry and focused only on Draco.

An opportunity presented itself by the end of the day: Ginny Weasley and her pathetic schoolgirl crush. Draco was all prepared to laugh until his stomach hurt, grinning in wait as a singing dwarf managed to ambush Potter and waylay him long enough to deliver his Valentine.

_I wish he was mine, he's really divine._

And that was when it all went to shit.

Potter stared up at the dwarf in mortified horror, mouth half-open, glasses slipping down his nose, green eyes bright as anything behind those lenses and Draco's stomach flipped in a strange, wobbly way.

Oh.

Oh _no_.

Late bloomer was beginning to sound less plausible as hot envy rose in him, flying from his mouth as he publicly mocked Potter for his diary, pretending to himself that the deep need unfurling in him to see the secrets inside was for bullying purposes rather than frantic curiosity. His spiking emotions only grew as the dramatics came to an anti-climactic close, and he was unable to prevent himself from throwing a snide comment after Weasley, delighting in the way she turned a horrible shade of red and how her face creased in humiliated despair.

Potter was nothing but a nuisance to Draco, or so he had thought. Now, he was feeling some fairly intense, undefined feelings for him, ones that sent his head spinning and his heart reeling whenever they were in the same room. He was grateful, at least, for his apparent subtlety. Either that, or Potter was utterly oblivious to the fresh pink on Draco's cheeks as he teased and the tremble of his hands, shaking with excitement at any attention he received. Had it always been like this? Not consciously, certainly, but looking at it, it wasn't such a ridiculous notion. There had always been a want, when he saw Potter. A want to coax a reaction from him, break his façade and witness him: raw and real and stripped bare, who he was without the title of the Boy Who Lived. Perhaps that want ran even deeper.

 _Am I gay?_ he wondered to himself, and whispered it into the privacy of his bed one night, curtains drawn and a quietening charm cast upon himself. Gay. The word felt wrong on his tongue and entirely detached from him, somehow. But some sore and hidden part of him came alight, spreading quick and sickly through his stomach, and it made sense of a lot. His steadfast lack of attention to girls. His endless yearning instead for _Potter's_ attention, that jolt of energy he'd feel whenever their eyes met, the hours he'd spend dreaming up barbs and retorts he could fire Potter's way, to see that look of indignation on his face, a pure and honest reaction, so much more than all those stories of his greatness.

His face. Ever set in a resentful scowl around Draco, but sometimes, bright and open with laughter at the Gryffindor table, an expression that Draco Malfoy would never induce from him. But he wanted to. Merlin's beard, he wanted to.

He wanted.

Draco always got the things he wanted. Once, he'd been desperate to find the Chocolate Frog card of Salazar Slytherin, and his mother had consecutively bought him one hundred and twenty three of the things before he'd found it, sitting on the floor of Sugarplum's sweetshop and tearing them open one by one. Another time, he'd asked for the Vibes Twins' new album, and asked for it _immediately_ , and within the hour his father had ventured out and retrieved it for him, sating him for another week before there was some other possession he desired. After that, it had been his pleading for a Comet 260 that had resulted in an especially good Christmas, and an especially good gift. Draco had never gone hungry a day in his life, and had always gotten his way.

Now, here was a lesson in humility.

So much for laughing at schoolgirl crushes: he seemed to be sporting one of his own.

That didn't stop him from taunting for the rest of the year, desperate and longing for Potter's eyes on him, to hear that venom-filled voice to work its way around the syllables of Draco's surname, to experience the exhilaration that came with making Potter feel _anything_. What other possible way was there to get his attention? At the end of the year, as Potter traipsed into the Celebration Feast with bruises on his jaw and cuts and scrapes licking along his arms and hands, Draco finally accepted the fact that he was utterly and irrevocably infatuated with his great rival. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the hero who conquered the Dark Lord, and Draco Malfoy's dirty little secret.

What on earth would his father have to say about that?

Gay was one thing. Gay for the bespectacled git who was responsible for the downfall of his father's previous master was another thing altogether. Potter was all he thought about, really. All he dreamed about. All he searched for when he entered a room, desperate and hopeful to see him, let his eyes trace the curve of his smile and drink in the dark caramel of his skin, the ever-ruffled ebony of his hair. So, this was what desire felt like. Funny. He'd known about the easier parts: the lovesick staring and incessant, obsessive babbling about them. He'd imagined those to be the _hard_ parts, watching his friends and classmates experiencing them and feeling vaguely ill at the thought of it all, but then… nobody had informed him about everything else. The embarrassment, the loneliness, the fear.

The yearning.

It was full and white-hot and it hurt so _good_. It was endless, a faint heaviness that was always present in him, as constant and steady as the sea. Draco didn't stand a chance against the tide.

 

***

 

Summer that year was hard, far harder than it had been the year before. On the train ride home he'd convinced himself that it would be fine, that this was it, that distance would be the cure to his horrible, embarrassing passion for Potter. But puberty made its sudden and cruel entrance during those few agonising months, and so Potter dug his claws in even deeper to Draco's poor heart, the allure at the concept of their mouths together too much for him to put out of his mind. He felt pitiful, muffling his moans in the dark with his hand over his mouth, biting down on his lower lip until he was sure that Potter's name wouldn't spill from his mouth, drawing blood as he did so, tasting it wet and coppery on his tongue. If he said it out loud, it would become real.

It wasn't real when he saw Potter again, taller now and filling out into his clothes a little, but somehow still retaining the scrawny build that Draco had grown used to. Draco was burning with worry about Potter's apparent fainting incident on the train, but of course, veiled it with a mask of mocking. It was the only way to conceal the truth, a secret so big that Draco feared if it ever got out he would die from the sheer humiliation of it.

It wasn't real when that familiar and wretched desire for Potter to just _look at him, look at me pleasepleaseplease_ flared up again, sending him all arrogant and defensive like usual, the only emotions he could use to hide his jittery excitement. He was only spurred on by Potter's eyes, so _green_ , now on him. It caused him a minor arm injury, but at least Draco now had something sustained to force Potter's focus onto him.

It wasn't real when they all slept down in the Great Hall, rows upon rows of students all trussed together, and Draco positioned his sleeping bag only a short distance from Potter. Blaise eyed him shrewdly, but watching Potter sleep made it all worth it, seeing how his expression went lax and his breathing evened out, putting him at peace for perhaps the first time since Draco had met him. He kept his eyes open until they burned, heavy with the desire for sleep, drooping as he continued to gaze at Potter, struck by his soft skin, his pretty mouth, the delicate fall of his eyelashes.

It wasn't real until Potter fell from his broom, body dropping from the sky like a bird, but with no indication that he could fly.

 _But I love him_ , he thought, _he can't die because I love him._

Ironically, it was the same day that as they shared a friendly game of chess, Blaise finally asked: “do you fancy Potter?”. Shocked and mortified, Draco was helpless to prevent the rush of blood to his cheeks, tinting his face pink, stealing any denial from his lips. His hand began to shake around the bishop he had gripped between his fingers. Blaise pressed on. “Be honest, Draco. I see the way you look at him- and today… your _face_. I thought you were about to _cry_.” Blaise, apparently feeling daring, reached across the board and plucked the piece from Draco's hand, setting it down. His voice had gone soft and kind. “It actually makes a lot of sense. You never shut up about him. You spend all your time trying to rile him up. And… the staring, Draco. It's ridiculous. Tell me, do you…?”

Draco nodded miserably, hands still trembling. A stuttering, choked breath pushed from his lungs, and he was too afraid to meet Blaise's eyes. “I think I love him,” he admitted, small.

“Shit.” Blaise inhaled, sharp, pitying. “How long?”

“I don't know. Maybe… always?”

“ _Always_?”

“Not always. I don't know, I mean... I haven't always _known_ , but I think I always… just a bit. It's confusing- there was definitely a time I hated him, and then all of that was gone. Suddenly I didn't hate him at _all,_ and I think I realised that I never really _did_. I always wanted _something_ , and I...”

“I'm sorry, Draco,” Blaise murmured, clearly sympathetic to the rising hysteria in Draco's voice, the quiet panic and growing sorrow in his eyes. “Really, I am.”

Heart aching and vision blurring, Draco replied: “so am I.”

And so life went on. But this time, Draco Malfoy was in love.

Loving Harry James Potter was this: soft, extended longing, stretching out forever in his heart, only faltered by the knowledge that _having_ Harry Potter's love would be entirely different. It would be bright and coarse and real. It would be that brash Gryffindor nerve translated into feeling, and Harry's hands would be rough when they cupped Draco's face and his lips would be bitten raw and chapped with cold and perfect, perfect, perfect.

It would be. If he had it.

Instead, out of bitter want and spiteful yearning, he lashed out. Went for Hagrid's great beast so Potter would look at him, told himself late at night that while it was all resentment in those eyes, at least Potter was looking in the first place. What he _wanted_ was how Potter had looked at Cho Chang before Gryffindor's match against Ravenclaw, strange and surprised and shy. It was exactly the expression of a clueless boy first discovering girls- Draco had grown accustomed to seeing it, first on Blaise, and then on Crabbe, Theo, Goyle. It made jealousy bloom in him, sudden and fierce, provoking him to cobble together a quick and pathetic plan with Crabbe, Goyle and Flint to throw Potter off, draw his attention back to _Draco_ and forget all about pretty Cho Chang and her subpar Seeker skills.

The Patronus didn't half knock the wind from him, and the plan lost Slytherin fifty points, but Draco would be lying if he said he wasn't proud.

Valentine's day came and went with barely a breath, no indication except Blaise disappearing to snog Hannah Abbott in all corners of the Castle. Draco almost didn't realise that a year had passed since he'd fallen headfirst into Potter's charming smile, a whole year wasted to hopeless, endless pining. He was apparently so besotted that he envisioned Potter's floating head in Hogsmeade, so desperate to fall back into the familiarity of his unrequited love. Yet every day was like the first, around Potter. That hot-cold exhilaration whenever he was near, the delirious fantasies that seized his heart, the sickening embarrassment that piqued when he didn't sustain his cool, thrown off by a swift hit from Granger or an angry hippogriff.

Draco felt a little guilty about leading the silly animal to an execution, but how else would Potter feel anything at all toward him? It was hatred, yes, but better that than indifference. He could see it in Potter's face on the Quidditch Pitch, the wild adrenaline and desperate urgency sparkling in his eyes, the wind sending his hair tangling over his face. Draco couldn't help himself, he finally had the chance to look at Potter _all he wanted_ with no consequence, and attempted as much as he could to prolong the Game, keep Potter up here in his sights, beautiful and free. Another part of him longed to win, competitive ferocity layering his throat, so when he saw a flash of gold, he dived before thinking. But then Potter was racing past him, hand outstretched, and he closed his fist around the Snitch. Frustrated fury shot through Draco, and Flint caught his eye, rage brimming, and the shame hit him like a Bludger to the head. The sea of scarlet encompassed the Slytherin team as they reached the ground, the red washing away the green, drowning away their emerald in favour of ruby. He was so _disappointed_ , almost _angry_ at Potter for the first time since he'd started wanting him, but then he turned.

Potter had been hoisted above the crowd, and was now holding up the Cup triumphantly, head tilted back with an expression of pure joy and euphoria, glowing in the sunlight. The crimson of his uniform was so striking against the warm umber of his skin, and the ink of his hair was falling into his eyes, which were full with unrestrained elation. There was a grin shaping his mouth that rivalled nothing Draco had ever seen on Potter, it was as clear and bright and new as the fresh coming of spring, as loose and untamed as he'd ever seen him. Draco's heart throbbed in adoration, and he felt as if he were falling in love all over again.

No wonder Potter's Patronus was a stag: his happiness was the most majestic sight Draco had ever seen in his life, and he held the memory in his palm like the Snitch that he had never caught.

 

***

 

Seeing Potter at the Quidditch World Cup was a sweet surprise, one that almost sent him silent, ashamed to be in the proximity of both his beloved and his father. It hadn't been like this since before he'd started wanting Harry, terribly, horribly, desperately. One glance at his face and Draco's mind was spiralling back to that sunlit day, Potter's face so beautifully open, his smile endless. Draco was helpless against him, against the rush of envy as Potter was entranced by the Veela, against the surge of need to _protectprotectprotect_ as the throng of Deatheaters emerged into the campsite. As jealous as he was of Granger, he knew Potter loved her, so of course: he warned them. Sneered as he did it, maintained that veil of nonchalance, as inside, his heart clamoured for them to go, to _run_.

Potter was all in once piece the next time he checked, slipping seamlessly into that old routine of searching for him on the train, simply to antagonise and observe the changes he'd undergone over the summer, use this new knowledge to evolve Potter in his fantasies, make him more current. He seemed to grow more beautiful every year, and Draco _wanted_ him, so damn much. It went even deeper still: Draco loved him. Truly. And when Potter's name came fluttering from the Goblet of Fire, Draco's heart jumped to his throat. _No_. The frozen shock and horror caught in Potter's expression was enough indication to Draco- this was not his doing. Whatever magic had led to Potter being chosen, it was down to forces beyond his control. So much for protecting Potter.

Instead, he stayed up night after night, charming badge after badge, anything to help take Potter's mind off the upcoming challenges. As usual, it was taken the wrong way: what was Draco to expect if he taunted and bullied and teased, acted as if it was a game, and that he hadn't spent days awake engineering the blasted things? It wasn't Potter's fault that Draco was so pathetic and lovesick, willing to resort to any measure for a simple glare. Even as he was thrown across the ground in ferret form, his heart was tripping in his chest with the knowledge that Potter was _looking_. It was why he started slandering him and his friends to Rita Skeeter, in part out of helpless resentment, and in part due to the expectation of how much attention he'd receive from Potter when that whole fiasco was revealed. It begged the question: how long would Potter last? Would he be around long enough to find out? Potter was about to be thrown into a tournament to the death, and Draco would only be able to watch.

So he did: hands clenched, white-knuckling around the barrier as Potter walked out in front of a Hungarian Horntail. Practically his whole life revolved around Potter; he couldn't lose him. He had his own wand ready up his sleeve, prepared to do _anything_ to prevent tragedy, to keep his precious rival alive. Then, in typical Potter fashion, it all suddenly turned around, and Potter was _winning_ , soaring above them on his Firebolt, wind in his hair. Draco's heart beat in rapture beneath his breast and his arousal throbbed a rhythm in his trousers, stricken by the display of powerful liberation unfolding before him. Blaise only smirked at him, knowing, and turned to talk to Mandy Brocklehurst instead, leaving Draco to his embarrassing excitement.

It was Mandy that Blaise ended up asking to the Yule Ball the following month, declaring to Draco that it was out of convenience rather than desire. Pansy, on the other hand, had not been so lucky.

“I've nobody to go to the Yule Ball with,” she admitted to him one evening, biting back tears as she did so.

“Is there anyone you'd _want_ to go with?”

“Terry Boot,” she confessed, glancing at him sideways. “But he's going with Lisa Turpin. He doesn't _want_ me. And now I'll have to go _alone_ -”

“You won't,” Draco assured. “I haven't asked anyone yet. I could ask you.”

“There isn't anyone you want?” she prompted after a pause, and Draco hesitated.

“No,” he decided on.

Her sorrow cleared so suddenly, like clouds parting to reveal the sun. She beamed at him, eyes still wet with her unshed tears, and nodded. “Friends?” she asked.

“Friends,” he confirmed, and that was that.

She looked beautiful that night, though he was no judge when it came to girls. Harry Potter, on the other hand, looked like a wet dream walking. Draco had to adjust himself just looking, mouth going dry as Potter entered the Great Hall all dressed up in his robes, so smart and gorgeous and brilliant. Draco was so stunned by him that he couldn't even bring himself to be jealous, gazing at Potter twirling the Gryffindor Patil sister around the dancefloor. The envy didn't come until after: watching Potter watching Chang, who in turn, watched Diggory. It was hard to focus on Pansy's tipsy presence beside him, a bitter thickness choking at his throat, something that even the alcohol-tinged punch couldn't stem. At one particularly sad glance from Potter to Chang, Draco almost felt his heart would break, bringing hot tears to his eyes, the sound of the Weird Sisters nothing but a faint din in his ears. He was almost too distraught to register the tugging on his arm, pulling at him until until fresh air hit him in a wave, crisp and cold in the winter evening.

“I'm not a fool, Draco,” Pansy whispered to him as they strolled from the Castle, hand in hand. “I know there's somebody else you want to be here with. I know you lied.”

Draco didn't say a word.

“It's Harry Potter, isn't it?” Her voice was sure, and his silence was answer enough. “You've been staring all night. I admit, I see the appeal- he looks dashing tonight. But you've certainly hidden it well. I never imagined it was _him_ you'd go for. I always assumed it would be Blaise, or if you really wanted a Gryffindor, Dean Thomas.”

“You…?”

“Knew you were gay? Oh Draco, darling, _yes_. I've known since first year.”

First year was a blur to him now, but apart from Potter, he couldn't think of one instance of his latent homosexuality rearing its head. But then that was how girls _were_ , ever-perceptive and always astute, glancing at the ones they loved and knowing a hundred different things about them without any indication. Still. He was rather shocked she'd figured it out.

“ _I_ didn't know then. How could _you_ possibly have guessed it?”

“One of the many mysteries of female intuition,” she remarked, and she looked so pretty in the moonlight. If his parents forced him to marry, Draco knew his first choice would be Pansy. “I can't tell you, honestly, I just… knew. Harry Potter, though. That's unexpected.”

“ _Is_ it?”

“Hm,” she considered, and Draco envisioned she was going through something similar to what he did when he realised his feelings. “Perhaps not. You two always were drawn to one another, after all. Like two sides of the same coin.”

“Don't,” Draco protested feebly. “He doesn't want me.”

Pansy didn't argue with that, because how could she? Instead, she clenched her hand tighter around his and told him that Potter was a right bloody idiot for not seeing what was right in front of his face, though Draco _could_ consider altering his flirting techniques a little. By the end of the night Draco felt ten times closer to her than he'd ever been, and his mood was only soured by the sight of Potter's frustration as Granger stormed away in a gust of blue fabric and chestnut skin. Amidst all his trauma, Draco couldn't help but wish Harry had experienced one good night. One chance to be a teenager.

So much for youth.

Harry Potter was only fourteen as he dived into the depths of the Black Lake to saved his beloved Ron Weasley, the awful red-haired reason that he and Draco weren't fast friends in first year. Harry Potter was only fourteen as he made his way deep into a maze with unseen ends, and returned hours later clutching the body of a fellow classmate, urgent terror bright in his eyes and sickened panic shaping his every breath. Harry Potter was only fourteen as he faced down You-Know-Who alone, lived to tell the tale, and then as a result was made into a pariah by his very own community.

“Why do things like this happen?” Goyle asked during Dumbledore's speech, bewildered sorrow sharp in his tone.

“That's war, I suppose,” Draco muttered in reply. “People die. Anybody dies.”

Draco didn't stand for Harry Potter, because how would that be explained? Hot tears fell from his eyes as he sat, and he didn't wipe them away. Just stared at Potter's figure across the Hall through the blur, longed for that undefined shape to be so far away and so safe, even if it meant Draco would never see him again. Potter was so brave and strong and gentle, still standing, honouring his dead classmate after risking his life to return his body to Hogwarts, even though he himself had endured horrors that nobody his age could begin to imagine. _Join us_ , was the litany in Draco's head as he implored to Potter on the Hogwarts Express, albeit tactlessly. There wasn't an excuse for the things he said, sometimes, and his desperation for Potter to _see_ _him_ didn't exactly make it _okay_. When he awoke an hour later, crumpled on the train floor with Crabbe and Goyle, Draco couldn't help but think he'd deserved those curses.

Poor Potter. Something was coming, and he was right at the centre of it all.

Poor Draco. He was helpless to do anything but follow.

 

_***_

 

Prefect. Of course he was. He'd expect nothing less, not when his rivals for the position were the likes of moronic Crabbe and sex-crazed Blaise. Pansy as his female counterpart, however? Draco had to admit, he was surprised- he'd always anticipated it would be Millie, with all her studying and quiet concentration in class, but Professor Snape had his favourites, Draco supposed, and he wasn't opposed to showing them.

Instead of lingering on the blatant favouritism of his own house, his mind flew to consider the others. Gryffindor, primarily. Would Potter be sitting across from him on the train ride to Hogwarts, a new shiny Prefect badge upon his chest? It would stick out like a sore thumb, contrasted by the unruly mane of Potter's hair and his sweet, crooked grin and his wild gaze. It complemented Draco nicely, but he was all smart and sharp and not at all like beautiful, untameable Potter. Still, it wouldn't exactly look _unattractive_. Would _anything_ look unattractive on Potter?

“Oh, Draco,” Pansy sighed, seeing his face fall as it wasn't Potter that entered the compartment, but Ron Weasley. Smooth, honeyed skin was replaced by freckled fairness, and Draco was clearly unable to hide his disappointment.

Of course, like usual, he sought Potter out, and couldn't prevent throwing barbs his way after being truly startled by the nervous flutter of his stomach that he hadn't felt since June. Potter always looked like heaven and sex and _life_ , and Draco was incapable of summoning a single coherent thought in his presence. Insides squirming, he mentioned the only thing apart from You-Know-Who that was _bound_ to make Potter react, a simple throwaway remark about his Animagus godfather. Something that would have his mind focused on Draco for a little longer. Draco had been cruel before summer, bringing up Diggory the way he had. One of Draco's many regrets, when it came to Harry Potter.

This year, his first regret was not asking Potter why his hand was becoming more bloody each day, in the odd but distinct shape of words. Second was not getting over himself and following Potter and his mindless admirers into the Hog's Head, coming forward and confessing that he wasn't exactly as he seemed, that he didn't _want_ You-Know-Who to take over the Wizarding World, that it was only _Potter_ he wanted. Next was not capitalising on every chance he had to speak to him, coming across him alone in the library, under the Beech tree by the Black Lake, the Owlery, and so on. Potter was so unaware of the significance he had in Draco's life, and Draco was sure that in Potter's eyes, he was nothing but a background irritant. How pathetic.

“Draco, darling, your turn: truth or dare?” Pansy asked one Friday night in the Slytherin common room, well past midnight, all of them drunk off their minds and giggling at every interaction. The game had been brewing for what felt like eternity now, the drunken haze of his mind appearing to distort time itself.

“Truth,” he said recklessly, only aware enough to remember that his previous questions hadn't been all that bad, rather than consider what they _could_ be.

“If you had to pick a Gryffindor,” Daphne interjected, laughing girlishly and oblivious to the sudden and hopeless panic spreading the faces of Pansy and Blaise, “who would you snog?”

“Harry Potter, of course,” Draco confessed, Veritaserum and Firewhisky stinging his throat from earlier. As soon as the words left his mouth he realised, almost shocked from his alcohol-addled stupor, cold horror rushing to his face. His deepest, darkest secret. Slipping out in a fifth year game of truth or dare. How fucking _typical_. Everyone had gone silent, shock and tension layering between them all.

“Harry Potter?” Daphne finally repeated, and Draco looked to her in panicked mortification, knowing that the others were fixing him with that same strange, bemused stare. Daphne. Crabbe, Goyle, Theo. All of them. Thank Merlin that Millie had passed out hours ago, and wasn't here for the bare exposure of Draco Malfoy's heart. “Why… Is that why you've always been so… obsessed?”

“Yes,” Draco admitted, unable to do anything else, compelled by the potion in his bloodstream. “I've wanted him forever.”

His voice was finally breaking, tears rushing forward and pricking at his eyes, and Pansy was up before anyone could do anything, yanking him by the arm to the dormitories. The door to the boys' room slammed shut, and a sob heaved from Draco as Pansy came forward to hold him; he couldn't stop the cries shaking from his chest. How utterly and completely humiliating. No matter how Pansy comforted him, there was no denying that he was now in danger of being outed to the entirety of Hogwarts _and_ have his hopeless crush on Harry Potter exposed. The others crept in hours later, so late that dawn was likely creeping over the horizon, and Draco heard them through the thin curtains around his bed, whispering to one another. Despite Quidditch being tomorrow- well, today- he'd been unable to sleep after Pansy left, too worried about the conversation in the common room and what it might result in.

“Was he being serious?” Theo was murmuring, shifting as he slipped into pyjamas.

“He was drinking Veritaserum,” Goyle answered. “We all were.”

Silence followed, and Theo let his breath out in a surprised rush. “I'll admit, I feel sorry for the bloke. He's got it bad.”

They _pitied_ him. It was almost as bad as despising him.

“What do we do?” Crabbe asked, and terror leapt in Draco's chest.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Blaise hissed in an instant. “Why would we do _anything_? Tease him for it, maybe, but only on a good day. You say anything to anyone, Crabbe, _anyone_ , and I swear I'll hex you into next week. Draco may be in love with _Potter_ , of all people, but he's still Draco. Even if that's synonymous for 'gay for a bespectacled Gryffindor prat'.”

Draco heard the dramatic flounce of Blaise throwing himself onto his bed, and felt the ice of his heart warm a little. Blaise and Pansy. What would he do without them? They were still by his side, despite the alienation he would likely receive from his House. From now on… things would be difficult.

Draco hated Potter, _hated_ him for doing this. Making a Malfoy so weak, and being far too oblivious to tell. _I hate you_ , he thought the next day, feeling that familiar bitter sting of disappointment as Potter beat him to the Snitch. There was venom in his tone and poison spewing from his mouth as he touched down on the Pitch, going for Weasley more than he already had with that song he and Blaise had prepared last week, and then, of all things: Potter's mother.

 _I hate you_ , he thought, wind knocked from his lungs as Potter tackled him to the ground, Draco's cruel remarks ringing in both of their ears. _Merlin's beard, I hate you._

 _I love you,_ he thought, as Potter's fists collided with his face, as his own blood choked him, self-loathing unfolding in his heart. _Merlin's beard, I love you._

Draco didn't hate him at all, he just wanted him. Wanted him so much he was fucking _stupid_ about it, treated him terribly just for attention, and now here they were: Draco bruised and Potter banned from Quidditch. It wasn't what Draco had wanted- what _had_ he wanted? Why had he said such things? There wasn't excuses, only explanations, and weak ones at that. Perhaps he deserved to watch as Potter went off on a date with Chang, tiny smile on his face and a flush on his cheeks. Merlin, he was beautiful. He deserved everything, the whole world, and if to Potter that was a perfect little nuclear family, then Draco wouldn't stand in the way. Instead, like usual, he wept into Pansy's robes, let her see him all vulnerable and heartbroken like nobody ever had.

This year felt like his worst yet: he read about Potter's trauma in the Quibbler and ached for him, cried for the lost future that Harry Potter had never experienced. Let Blaise kiss him during another game of Truth or Dare, shut his eyes and pretended it was Potter, brought himself off later to the pretend press of Potter's lips against his. Joined the blasted Inquisitorial Squad so he could see Potter more, keep an eye on him under the façade of his frequent and expected bullying. Likely dropped a grade in Charms at the simple breathless excitement of Potter's presence during his OWL. Wanted and wanted and wanted.

“The Cruciatus Curse ought to loosen your tongue,” Umbridge was saying, and Draco's blood went cold. Violent hatred for her raged within him like a storm, like it had when he'd first started to notice the words etching their way onto the skin on the back of Potter's hand. Draco noticed him. He always, always noticed him, and he'd noticed that, too. The monster- if she were about to torture Potter right here and now… Draco wouldn't let her. His heart seized at the fear on Potter's beautiful, brave face, and he knew he wouldn't let Umbridge touch his boy. Oh, let her try.

Granger beat him to it, but only just.

Draco, Merlin help him, was beginning to like her.

Potter, on the other hand, was quickly becoming less likeable in his eyes. Draco was really quite smitten with him, in all honesty, and had been for years now. More than anything, he was so desperately proud of him for his display at the Ministry, and slightly in awe of how he was both still alive after facing down You-Know-Who _again_ and still standing after so tragically losing his godfather.

But, then.

Draco's father.

To say he felt furious was an understatement. Potter was like that, though. All blind and bumbling impulse with no thought to the consequences of his actions. Of _course_ he'd simply rushed into the Ministry without thinking and ended up landing Draco's father in Azkaban, forcing him to spend months upon months with the Dementors and the other nutters in that forsaken place. They had never been _close_ , not with Draco far preferring his mother, but he _respected_ his father, though he wasn't entirely in support of his beliefs and how far he was willing to take them. His father was a powerful man, and Draco had always been provided for. At fifteen, Potter certainly didn't deserve all the rage of You-Know-Who projected upon him, but Draco felt as if his own wrath was justified. Potter was the reason his father was miles away, locked up and suffering all sorts of horrors. His father would return soon, but Potter really was frustrating sometimes. So focused on his uncompromising view of right and wrong that he was unable to sympathise with anyone slightly different to him, unable to see the intricacies of the situation, the danger that he put others in.

The danger being You-Know-Who waiting at Malfoy Manor when Draco returned for the summer. Suddenly, it was as if Potter wasn't the centre of his universe any longer.

 

***

 

Dumbledore. The old fool was surely deteriorating, well past his time of being Headmaster, but Potter seemed to practically idolise him. Draco had never seen the appeal- Dumbledore, on occasion, had wise words to speak, but usually it was nothing of any significance. That didn't mean Draco wanted him _dead_ , however.

More importantly, he didn't want to _kill_ him.

But what choice did Draco have?

It was either kill Dumbledore, or die. Kill Dumbledore, or watch his family die. Kill Dumbledore, or prolong the war further.

The pain had barely begun, but Draco wanted it _over_. This war. Too many had already died, and it was nothing but an elusive storm to most people at Hogwarts, save for him and perhaps a few of the lot from Dumbledore's Army. Most kids in his year were sheltered and unaware of what being in You-Know-Who's presence felt like: cold and empty and still with fear. How Potter had escaped him year after year, Draco would never understand. Only Potter. Only brilliant, courageous Potter. Draco, the coward, could barely spend ten minutes in the same room as him, having a _talk_ , without needing some air. He supposed he took after his father in that way. In fact, Draco didn't think he'd ever see his father in the same way again. Azkaban was affecting him more than they'd presumed, turning him into a pathetic shell of the refined and composed man he claimed to be. He was no great follower of the Dark Arts: he followed the Dark Lord out of fear.

As did Draco, now.

He was so frightened that even the presence of Potter couldn't soothe him. It set him ablaze as it always had, burning and swirling within him, a secret locked in his sore heart. But it didn't eventually slacken to soft want as it had used to. His life had become a rocky path to navigate, and not even his heart full of _PotterPotterPotter_ had been able to withstand the sharp piercing of the Dark Lord and his scrutinising sadism.

He was so frightened that he happily struck out at Potter, sick while doing so, but perfectly content to snap at him in Madam Malkin's and even resort to violence on the train. Stay alive. It was all there was. Push Potter away- him and his blasted hero complex. He'd likely jump in, ruin everything with his hopeless, reckless touch, sparking from his flushed cheeks, tinted with courage. Potter was so utterly Gryffindor, and Draco couldn't risk him. No, this year, he would have to be kept at arms length.

And so: Draco tried forgetting to be in love.

The cabinet. Draco thought often of climbing inside it himself, hiding from the world and waiting out the war. But it wasn't an option- what about his mother? His father could do whatever he pleased as far as Draco was concerned, since he was the reason they were caught up at the centre of this chaos in the first place. But his mother was innocent, and just as dear to Draco as she had always been. Any urges to flee were crushed by the brand of the Dark Mark on his arm, a reminder of what was truly at stake here. Not only his life, but the life of his mother, perhaps the most important person in the world to him, rivalled only by his unwavering devotion to Potter. He'd told her, after that day in Diagon Alley, over a Butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron.

“I don't think I'll be marrying Pansy,” he declared after multiple remarks on his mother's part, voice shaking and hands white-knuckling around his mug. “I'm gay, Mother.”

“Oh.” Her eyes had grown wide, face pale, but she was nodding. “I see. How long…?”

“A while.”

“Why didn't you tell me earlier? How did you know? When exactly-”

“Harry Potter,” he replied, providing an answer to all she had and would want to ask. “It's always been him.”

She had held his hand and let him wipe away tears and listened to his every word, and still loved him. A mother's love. How powerful it could be; it was why Potter was here and therefore something that Draco thanked Merlin for each day. After the war, who knew what world would remain? Who knew which side would win? Draco's only loyalty was to life and his mother, and in current times, this meant loyalty to the Dark Lord, as much as he despised the bastard. Less than an hour spent with the bloke and Draco quickly realised that his own views weren't nearly as bigoted as he had originally thought. He may not particularly understand Muggles, or even like them for that matter, but anybody had to be better than You-Know-Who.

His desperation grew as time passed. The cabinet wasn't yielding any answers, and Draco turned to curses and poison instead, mind stuck on the vision of his mother sat at home surrounded by Deatheaters. In Draco's dreams, Professor Snape swooped in, snatched the wand from his hand and did it all for him. His mother was murdered. In Draco's dreams, Dumbledore came to him, forgave him, took him in and brought him into the safety of the Order of the Phoenix. His mother was killed. In Draco's dreams, Potter held a hand out and Draco took it willingly, let himself be pulled into fiery Gryffindor courage and the rage against injustice. His mother burned in the heat of the flames.

Old dreams of Potter still plagued him: green eyes shining in the sunlight and sweet smiles pressed against skin, moans caught between mouths and flower petals folded in the pitch-black of a messy mop of hair. But the cloying, lovestruck adoration didn't remain any longer, and instead gave way to agony, inevitable and inescapable.

“Why are you betraying me, Draco?” Potter asked, and it brought hot tears to Draco's eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he replied. “I have to.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do,” he assured. “I do love you. Like you wouldn't believe. Like nobody has ever loved anyone before.”

Potter's last kiss tasted like blood, and then he was gone, Draco's everything disappearing into nothing, leaving only phantom kisses and the familiar ache of longing in his wake. Draco thought _IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou_ , and sinking to the ground, shouted it after Potter, screamed it until his voice cracked and his throat was raw, until his lungs felt like they would collapse. Potter didn't return.

Potter didn't ever return.

Every night, Draco would wake with fresh fear brimming in his heart, confession balanced on his tongue.

Draco saw Potter watching. Of _course_ he did, it was something he'd wanted _forever_. If this were a year before, perhaps, he'd be _giddy_ with it, but now things were different. Draco wasn't fifteen and desperate anymore, he was sixteen and dying. Potter didn't _want_ him, he _suspected_ him. Yet his eyes were as green and glaring as always, and it made Draco no less breathless, treasuring each glance and remembering them later with the curtains of his four-poster drawn, mind briefly and blissfully clear from thoughts of impending doom. Merlin's beard, did Draco want to go to him. Fall to his knees and tell all, beg for asylum and safety and hot kisses amidst a war, warm mornings wrapped up in one another. Draco was stuck in the dark, though, stuck in the night; there was no escape in sight. Potter would never accept him, and terror had such a hold on him that he didn't dare speak the whole truth to any of his friends, sparing them the danger of close encounters with the Dark Lord, even through secondhand description.

Instead, Draco turned to the only viable candidate: bloody Moaning Myrtle.

“I'm terrified,” he would often cry.

“I love him,” was another common sentence.

Draco didn't mean to hurt Katie Bell, and _especially_ not Weasley. As much as he couldn't _stand_ the ginger prick, he knew Potter cared for him. The thing he would miss the most, actually- Draco remembered it well. The spike of envy as it was revealed that Potter's closest and dearest friend was Ron Weasley, followed quickly by sharp relief as Potter finally emerged from the Lake, gasping for air but completely and beautifully alive. Draco wouldn't dare put Potter through such pain, not on purpose. He was far too weak and far too lovesick to hurt a boy with such life in his eyes and such abandon in his smile. That mess of utterly exhilarating beauty was finally looking back, and now Draco didn't have the time.

How ironic.

Draco could mark where it all fell apart: the bathroom. Perhaps he never should have gone to Moaning Myrtle in the first place. There were a lot of things Draco would have done differently in his sixth year, given hindsight.

It was sheer and utter panic, encompassing mortification, unbridled shame. Nobody enjoyed the idea of their great unrequited love finding them crying like a child. Draco, as he always had, _especially_ when it came to Potter, lashed out. Threw hexes, dodged Potter's own defences to Draco's sudden attack, and even, in a blind rush of fury and thoughtlessness, was entirely prepared to attempt the Cruciatus Curse.

However angry Draco was, he knew it wouldn't work. Not on Potter. _Never_ on Potter. His dear, idiotic Potter.

Sharp pain slashed across his stomach, and Draco fell. Because of Potter. Typical- that boy was always making Draco fall, every day, always, endlessly. He knew the blood was pouring out of him, warm and slick from his chest, and felt Potter kneel beside him, closer than he'd ever been off the Quidditch Pitch without an aim to antagonise. If Draco weren't bleeding out, his skin would be on _fire_. Merlin's beard, he adored Potter. He was so bloody beautiful that it was ridiculous. Miles of skin that looked soft as anything and eyes that made Draco weak in the knees.

“No- I didn't-”

 _Didn't know_. Draco had never heard the spell before, either. Potter was so stupid sometimes, bumbling into every situation with all the tact of Crabbe and Goyle when they caught Draco gazing over at the Gryffindor table. Draco loved him anyway. Loved him, loved him, loved him.

It took a few weeks for him to really process what had happened. To truly come to terms with the healing scars traced across his chest like faint red roads on a map, spiralling outwards. _Potter_ had done this to him. _Harry_. Draco felt he knew him well enough to understand that however much he despised Draco, he was no killer. He was far from cruel. He was _kind_ and _sweet_ and yes, he could be intense at times, especially in a fight, but his _face_ as he'd watched Draco shaking on the floor, blood pooling around him. The shock and the horror. He hadn't _meant_ it, hadn't intended for damage like that, yet it still _hurt_. Harry had injured him, potentially permanently, and now he was off snogging Ginny Weasley. That was what broke Draco's resolve in the end, and he was helpless against the onslaught of tears that rushed forward in an instant, mere seconds after Pansy broke the news to him. It didn't matter that the whole dorm was watching. It didn't matter that Harry had left scars across his heart- hadn't he always?- that might remain forever. He wept into her shoulder for that poor lost little twelve year old boy that did nothing but _want_.

If only he'd known the pain it would cause him.

Fucking Ginny Weasley.

 _There are more important things_ , he thought, standing opposite Dumbledore with his wand raised, hand shaking. _Mother_.

“Come over to the right side, Draco.” He imagined it, for a second. Harry throwing him a look of barely concealed awe and surprised respect, and when the war was over, taking him in his arms, pressing joy between them. “You are not a killer.”

Dumbledore, the fool, was right. His hand slipped lower at the mention of his mercy, and then the door burst open. Draco was no killer, not even with the Deatheaters here. To think he could've done it while alone was laughable. He was only a boy, really, doing this to save his mother, and Merlin help him, his father too. Snape was a killer. Appeared to do it seamlessly, speak the Killing Curse like a simple Charm or even a prayer, and Dumbledore was dead.

This would break Harry's heart.

It had certainly broken Draco's, and he'd barely known the man.

 

***

 

_Draco Malfoy hated Muggles, Mudbloods and Blood traitors._

_Draco Malfoy was in love with Harry Potter._

Two truths that had stood strong against the test of time, but now, Draco wasn't sure about the former. To watch the Dark Lord kill a simple and innocent Professor from Hogwarts, to watch _all_ of this, bigotry in its purest and rawest form… it was illuminating. Draco didn't want this. Draco was _seventeen_ , he wanted to be at school making fun of Harry and _wanting_ him and feeling the wind on his face during Quidditch, drinking Firewhiskey with the other Slytherins and avoiding essays for History of Magic. Not here, witnessing brutality like nothing he'd seen before. He was nothing but a child. A scared, pathetic child.

A child who wanted his mother safe.

So he obeyed orders, like any good soldier. Tortured Rowle under duress, cried himself sick afterwards while his mother stroked his hair. Longed for Pansy and Blaise and their sharp wit, for Theo and Daphne and their steady humour, Crabbe and Goyle and their quiet camaraderie, Millie with her raucous laughter. They were with him soon enough, stuffed into a train compartment on the Hogwarts Express, but there was no longer want for any light-hearted bantering. What could be said?

Daphne began to cry during the Raid for Harry, and Pansy went to her, holding her as she sobbed. Blaise looked as if he wanted to chime in, but thought better of it, diverting his eyes to the floor and biting down hard on his lip, hands clenched into fists at his sides. It was hard for all of them. Knowing that all that was coming would be so incredibly awful, knowing that all they would experience this year was pain. Perhaps most of them had said things in the past, things that were truly vile, but it was quickly becoming clear that those words were parroted views of their parents'. And perhaps it was wrong that it had taken a war for them to realise how disgusting those opinions were, but Draco was too frightened to berate himself and any of his friends for that. If Harry won this, the time to repent would come. That time wasn't now. Instead, his focus was this: staying alive.

“I will save us all, you know,” Harry told him each night in his dreams, his face so close and so lovely. “But it isn't for you. It's for Ron, Hermione, Ginny. My friends.”

“I know,” Draco replied, “I know you'll save us. You're incredible. Utterly brilliant. I trust you with all of it- the whole world. I trust that you love them enough to win this thing.”

“It's more than that. More than them. It's about what's right. You never really got that, did you?”

“No.”

“Maybe if you had, I'd have seen you. Wanted you back.”

“You aren't gay. You love _her_. Ginny.”

“Then friends, at least. But that's not what I meant.”

“I know,” he repeated, head over heels for the curve of Harry's mouth, the white flash of his teeth when he grinned, the intoxicating thrum of his presence. Draco's heart tripped beneath his ribs at his proximity, his skin tingling, from his cock to his fingertips. He ached to touch. But Harry wasn't gay. “I'm in love with you.”

“I know,” Harry said, and his lips were warm and real and Draco forgot, for a while, that people were dying.

As reality shifted from autumn to winter, the trees bare and barren but tinged with white, Draco dreamt of summer. Harry and almost every season made sense in his head. There was the fresh crispness of autumn that he felt seeing Harry after weeks without, like the clean stiffness of newly washed sheets. Harry fit perfectly amongst the oranges and ambers of nature, during those months. And then, winter: Harry in the snow, his hair obsidian against the raging world of white, eyes sparkling with childlike joy. Christmas was one of those few times the Dark Lord didn't seem to get to him, a day of pure and true happiness that sent Draco reeling. Spring came soon after, flowers blooming bright as Draco's love reared up at the flashes of forearm and collarbone Harry displayed in the blossoming heat. Morning dew dotted the greenery of the Castle, and Draco clung onto every wayward glance, all in preparation for summer.

Summer- that was his one blind spot, when it came to Harry.

Maybe he'd caught a glimpse at the Quidditch World Cup, but with its transience and the roaring intensity of excitement that one just didn't get at Hogwarts, he didn't really count it. Harry had looked beautiful in the warm evening blue, and Draco had loved him. Apart from that, his memories didn't present a lot of information. He'd envied Granger and Weasley a lot in those juvenile years, longed to watch Harry honest and relaxed over a summer breakfast, to see the way he spread his jam up close rather than peering across the Hall at him.

Envy seemed so petty now the streets were filling with innocent Muggle blood.

Envy seemed so petty now Harry Potter was being dragged into the Manor, a Stinging Jinx warping his face.

Draco would know him anywhere.

It wasn't all about looks, when it came to Harry, gorgeous as he was. It was the way he held himself, the way he walked, the way his expressions twitched across his face. His voice when he was angry, when he was happy, when he was confused. His everlasting courage, the furious glare of his loyalty, the song of his laugh echoing throughout the Great Hall like a haunting, ascending phoenix. Draco had been absolutely besotted for half a fucking decade; this boy was ingrained in his very soul, and even if one day, by some miracle, Draco moved on from him, Harry Potter would always be a part of him. Harry Potter would always be entitled to a piece of Draco Malfoy's heart, as first loves often were.

First love. That was all this had been, back in third year. Now, five years deep with a willingness to quite literally cut out his heart for Harry, Draco was beginning to wonder if he would always belong to Harry. Utterly, entirely, ardently. He'd die before anyone touched him. Would stand in front of the Dark Lord and face the blaze of the Killing Curse before they hurt him.

“I don't know,” he said.

 _I know_ , he thought, _I'd know him anywhere._

_I love you._

Amongst the chaos he was grateful nobody saw his wand pointed at Aunt Bella, that nobody saw his hands loosen around the wands for Harry to grab, that he smiled despite the sting of where crystal had pulled sharply across his face. He smiled dark and bloody and smitten, full of utter relief that Harry Potter was _alive_.

Harry was always so alive, each of his movements shaped by it. When Draco cornered him in the Room a month later, true desperation slipped into his voice as he begged for Crabbe not to kill him. Harry was so, so alive, and he couldn't die. Draco had convinced Crabbe and Goyle that he was fine with turning Harry over to the Dark Lord, that he'd gotten over him _months_ ago, that it was all _fine,_ but it _wasn't_. Harry couldn't die and neither could _Draco_ , surrounded by hot flames and rising smoke. Of _course_ this was how he would die, burning up with it all, the conflict and yearning and fear. It was thick in his lungs and air seemed to escape him, and Draco knew he was dying. This was it: Harry Potter freewheeling above him, and Draco scorched on the ground. Draco didn't deserve life, not after all he'd done. It was no surprise that this war was the end of him. He'd chosen the wrong side and now he was paying the price.

Harry didn't care.

Harry was kind and selfless and the most wonderful person Draco had ever known, and he didn't care that Draco was nothing.

Draco had bullied him for seven years, had hurled insults and slurs his way, put him and his friends in great danger. He'd been so foul to him. And yet, always good, Harry was saving him. Pulling Draco up behind him and soaring above the destruction and the ashes. How funny that what he had always wanted- to be this close to Harry- came at such a time. That it came while Vince burned below them, while the place that had helped him become the person he was today was fiercely attacked by his own parents, while tears and soot plastered his face.

“Where's Ginny?” were the first words falling from Harry's mouth once they'd escaped, panting on the floor, and Draco was more than used to the dull pang of jealousy he felt at that name, though he was surprised it was still as persistent during such an awful battle. The fight was raging on around them, roaring like the Fiendfyre that had stolen his friend, and the whole thing was drawing in. There would be an end in sight, soon.

Harry would win. Harry had to win.

Amidst the throng and the shouts and the death, Draco attempted desperately to stay alive. Threw all the curses and jinxes he knew from his mother's wand, pledged false allegiance to an organisation that had caused him nothing but misery. He and his mother, they could escape this unscathed, if they were lucky. Life could return to normal and he could pine for stupid Harry Potter from afar as usual, he could spend days on end with Pansy and Blaise in a world that wasn't overrun by such sickness and prejudice. His rage toward Pansy for suggesting that they hand Potter over was significant, especially since she knew the extent of Draco's love for him, but they could move past it. He could forgive, but only if this _ended_.

Only if the Dark Lord perished.

If only.

Lifeless and limp, Harry Potter finally returned to Hogwarts.

Draco's agony was soundless as the body was presented to the crowd, so immense that it couldn’t even spill from his mouth, churning inside him with excruciating intensity. Instead, silent weeping racked his body, sending his hands trembling as he gazed at the broken shell of the boy he used to love. Harry, brave Harry, who did nothing but fight for what he believed in. His story had seemed fated to end in tragedy, right from the beginning, from a simple accident of birth. How Draco had loved him. _S_ _till_ loved him, even as a mere corpse in Hagrid's arms, empty.

“He beat you!” cried Ron Weasley, expression shaped in furious, righteous sorrow, and Draco felt such a violent rush of affection for him that the pain nearly stopped. Nearly. He had been so harsh on them, Harry's friends. But they knew him, far better than Draco did. They loved him. He was _theirs_.

Even bloody Neville Longbottom, with his defiant denial of the Dark Lord, sent Draco inflating with respect. _When hell freezes over_. Draco saw it now, why these were the friends Harry chose. They were all like him: so ridiculously Gryffindor, so dutiful and steadfast to the cause. Even those that weren't from his House, they stood tall against the power of the Dark Lord just as their friends did. They loved Harry, but it was about _more_ than him. Some had died- it wasn't for one person. It was about what was _right_ , something Harry had believed in so much it had killed him. What a beautiful fool. Harry, Harry, Harry. His Harry. Draco should've taken the final blast of green for him, should've sunk to his feet before the Dark Lord and pleaded, implored him to spare an innocent who was nothing but a boy, who was _Draco's_ boy, his great love.

How would he ever go on?

“Harry!”

The name tore from his throat in a rush of joy and relief. Harry was here and he was real, circling the Dark Lord like he was nothing but prey. Love leapt in Draco like a great Gryffindor lion, daring and endless and true. If Draco hadn't known him, he would've thought he was magic incarnate. But no- he was nothing but human. Fearful and flawed, but brave. Harry asked Voldemort to find some remorse, _any_ remorse, and Draco bit back more tears, awestruck at the depth of his goodness, even on the brink of potential death. Harry saying Draco's name so carelessly made his heart squeeze in his chest, made him remember how truly and fully devoted he was, so much so that he didn't care he'd had the power of great wizards at his hands for almost a year. It wasn't a waste. Not when Harry had it now, and was about to use it to change the world.

The Boy Who Lived.

He really, really was.


	2. Chapter 2

_after_

“Draco Malfoy is a bully, and a bigot, and a coward,” Potter was saying, voice loud and clear. “But Draco Malfoy is no killer.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“I was there, that night in the Astronomy Tower. Draco had been instructed to kill Dumbledore, and since his attempts before had failed, he cornered Dumbledore once and for all, meaning to get it over with. Dumbledore implied that he hadn't _really_ tried to kill him before, considering his efforts were so pathetic. Draco... he stalled. Talked for ages about how clever he'd been. Admitted that if he didn't kill him, Voldemort would kill his family. He started to lower his wand.”

“It was Severus Snape who killed Dumbledore in the end, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Potter answered. “Under instructions from Dumbledore himself. They both knew Draco didn't have the heart to do it- he was just a boy. Even after the Deatheaters got there, he was shaking so badly he could barely aim. If they hadn't arrived when they did… he probably would've been fighting alongside the Order for the remainder of the war.”

“Draco was also the reason the Deatheaters were there in the first place, however,” the Chief Warlock countered, but Potter didn't falter.

“True. But he was a child. He and his family were being threatened- what was he supposed to do? Let them die?”

“You were also a child during the war. You saved the Wizarding World. You rebelled from the beginning.”

“I didn't have Voldemort living in my house.”

The remark sparked an outburst of hushed muttering throughout the Wizengamot, and Draco couldn't glance up, for the life of him. He'd thought avoiding Azkaban would be a miracle when he'd first entered the Ministry, but then Harry Potter had taken the stand. He'd spoken fiercely in defence of Draco's mother, claiming that the war wouldn't have been won without her, an action that Draco would forever owe him for. Now he was defending _Draco_ , someone who had caused him nothing but misery for the last seven years.

"Would you say Draco was as instrumental to winning the war as his mother was?”

Potter considered it. “Perhaps not. But he did refuse to identify me and my friends at the Manor.”

Most knew the incident he was referring to. Potter had only given one interview after the war, and it had been to the Quibbler, detailing his perspective of the war from start to finish. Since Cedric Diggory. Draco was sure there were instances left out, as the interview was more of a military report than a biography, but the most important events had been covered. Such as the run-in at Malfoy Manor.

“How can you be sure he knew it was you?”

“He knew. He'd antagonised us for years, and Ron and Hermione had no Stinging Jinx on their faces. They were recognisable, and I'm willing to bet that I was, too. Even with the Jinx. Malfoy knew us, yet he refused to confirm it. Measures were taken to imprison us anyway, and we still escaped, but the intentions were there. For all his false Deatheater bravado, Malfoy didn't want us dead.”

“You are aware he used Unforgivable Curses during the war.”

“Oh, yes. He tried to use one against me, once.”

“Then if I may ask, Mr Potter, why are you here supporting him?”

“War is… brutal,” he began, and there was a far-off look on his face. Draco couldn't imagine the things he'd been through, even with the knowledge the interview had given him. “It's hard and it's all the time. Something that none of you will understand is that of those fighting at Hogwarts, so many were children. So _many_. And some… those like Draco Malfoy… they didn't get a choice. By no means is Draco a victim in the way our dead were, but it wasn't easy for him. He did suffer. I saw, sometimes, in Voldemort's head. Draco was _forced_ to do all those terrible things. He was so scared. He was trapped. He deserves a lot of things, but Azkaban isn't one of them.”

And so, Draco received his sentence. A mandatory position on the team of wizards tasked with rebuilding Hogwarts. A required eighth year, a measure that Draco would likely have taken anyway. Then, freedom.

It was Potter's testimony that had swung it.

“Thank you,” he breathed as the court disbanded, immersed in perhaps the only civil interaction he'd ever had with Potter, who smiled in response. It was the loveliest thing Draco had ever seen.

“Don't mention it. It was… something I had to do,” Potter said, sincere. His hand reached into his pocket and withdrew with a surprising sight: Draco's wand. He pressed it into Draco's hand, fingertips brushing his palm, sending spikes of helpless desire down Draco's spine. “Here. You should have this.”

“You're… sure?”

“Of course,” Potter replied, and his hand was gone, falling back down to his side. He caught glimpse of something over Draco's shoulder, and softened. Draco didn't need to look to tell it was Granger, who had accompanied Potter to court today. Potter made to leave, nodding at Draco. “I'll see you at Hogwarts, Malfoy.”

“You're helping rebuild?” Draco asked before thinking, the question sounding clunky on his tongue. He was simply too desperate for Potter's attention to care. Potter turned, green eyes peering at Draco in faint surprise at his curiosity. He'd changed since the Battle, but only a little. Had cut his hair, revealing the jagged cut of the scar once more. Cleaned his face, exposing the alluring bronzed hazel of his skin. Seemed lighter and heavier all at once, likely relieved the war was over but still grieving for his friends. Draco could read him like a book.

“No, I… Hogwarts is home. I don't think I want to see it in that state. Not after everything,” Potter confessed, and it was surprisingly personal information to share with your once childhood tormentor. “I'll be going to eighth year, though.”

“The Auror programme won't just accept you without NEWTs?”

“Oh, they will. But I don't know if that's what I want, to be honest. Haven't I seen enough Dark Magic for a lifetime?”

Hadn't they all?

And that was that. With a casual grin and flash of robes, Potter was gone, nothing but a whirlwind of steady courage and everlasting beauty. Draco melted where he stood.

 

***

 

The summer of 1998 was a long one, stretching from Draco's trial in early June to the final touch on restoring Hogwarts to its former glory in mid August. He spent many days covered in grime and soot from the grounds of his once-home, the soles of his feet aching and his hand cramping around the shape of his wand. Seeing Hogwarts in such ruins was hard, all things considering. Considering he had grown there for seven years and had then contributed to its subsequent destruction. But it began to reshape, after a while, started resembling that beautiful Castle he had once known. The place he had met his best friends, where he had fallen in love, where he had nearly died, where he had _felt_.

Home.

“Why'd he do it, Malfoy?” Ernie Macmillan asked one day, shifting debris with a casual Levitation Charm. “Why did Harry speak at your trial?”

“I don't know,” Draco said truthfully. “He said something about war being hard and how we'd all suffered. He was… kind.”

“Kind,” Macmillan repeated incredulously. “You think you deserve that? From _him_?”

“I didn't _say_ that,” Draco replied, sullen. “You and I both know I deserved nothing less than a decade in Azkaban. But here I am. There isn't a lot I can do about it now.”

Macmillan considered him, then. Stared at him with a furrowed brow and a twitching hand, fisted loosely around his wand, and Draco stared back. He wasn't unattractive, Draco supposed. His sandy hair fell sweetly across his forehead and his lips rested in a natural pouting manner that would simply beg to be kissed if one were interested. It wasn't as if Draco didn't _want_ other boys, per se- he _was_ gay, after all, and had spent many an eventful night with the odd Quidditch magazine- but he didn't see the merit in pursuing them. All he would ever think about was Potter and his dark curls and his lips bitten raw in the wintertime. He was utterly irresistible, even when he wasn't present in corporeal form.

Draco looked away, and got back to work. Hogwarts had to be ready for Harry Potter to return.

Those last few weeks before September didn't feel like summer at all, were simply a strange void of sad longing and bitter excitement. Pansy teased and Blaise joked and Theo occasionally smiled, and none of them mentioned Vince. None of them mentioned the seldom appearances from Greg, Daphne and Millie, those who couldn't seem to ignore the phantom presence of the war, couldn't pretend that the scars they'd retained didn't exist. Instead they remained shrouded in the solid protection of their homes, seen only briefly from time to time, horror still faint in their expressions. Even those who could pretend… sometimes Pansy's teasing would waver, sometimes Blaise's jokes would halt, sometimes Theo's smiles were barely there at all.

“I thought you were thinking of him as 'Harry', now,” Pansy murmured one night, deep in conversation about their respective love lives, her head on his chest.

“I was. And then I wasn't. I don't know,” Draco mumbled in reply, and her hand found his.

“You can talk to me, you know. I'm sorry about before. What I did to him,” she said, and her voice was tremulous, as it always was when they spoke of her betrayal. To suggest handing Potter over the Dark Lord. It had been the ultimate cruelty on her part; it had been akin to deciding to rip out Draco's heart.

“I know you are,” Draco sighed. It had taken time, but forgiveness had come. “As for Potter... I suppose I felt I had to withdraw. After the Battle, I wondered if I'd ever see him again. In person, I mean. Not on the front of the Prophet.”

“Wow. You really got lucky, didn't you?”

“Seeing him every day for an entire school year. I can't wait,” he drawled, injecting irritability into the sarcastic drag of his voice.

“Don't sound so hard done by, darling, you and I both know you're _elated_ ,” she goaded, and he could only bristle in response.

“I wanted to get over him,” he protested feebly, and her short laugh was enough said, as was the pitying but amused expression on her face as she rose to check her hair in the mirror.

“That isn't happening any time soon, I'm afraid, though I expect you can always _try_. Who knows, maybe this is the year he'll finally look back- there hasn't been any reports of a reconciliation with Ginny Weasley. He seems unequivocally single. This is your chance.”

“Don't be stupid,” he snapped, watching as she pulled her hair back from her face, eyes following the strands that pulled along the rise of her cheekbones. “Potter isn't gay. He _isn't_.”

“There are a lot of things we don't know about Boy Wonder, you remember that,” Pansy warned, her expression sharp in the mirror, before she turned and smiled warmly at him. “Now, Daphne will be here in less than an hour. Are you going to help me look pretty or not?”

“You girls and your bloody dancing around one another,” he muttered under his breath, but her answering derisive snort was indicative that it hadn't been as quiet as he'd hoped.

“ _You_ can talk.”

Draco had to try to resist his urge to smudge her eyeliner.

 

***

 

Draco had watched the last brick move into place on the Castle, yet he still hadn't felt it in the way he did now. It wasn't the same. Hogwarts had been nothing but a building then, but now… Now it was full. Full and alive. From Seamus Finnigan to Susan Bones to Padma Patil, everyone but the dead had returned to Hogwarts. It was home, and none of them wanted to leave it. Walking through those doors into the warm glow of the candles illuminating the Great Hall… Draco felt eleven all over again. That child was lost to him now. He was nothing but a hopeless and ruined adult, dreaming of days that weren't war-torn and filled with Harry Potter.

Dreaming of days that were honest and teenage and true.

The Sorting curled warm in fond in his stomach. All of it was so _familiar_ , and Draco was nearly weeping at how much he had missed it. Last year had been a sombre affair, had been nothing but pale-faced children shaking in terror. _This_ was Hogwarts: grinning and happy and innocent, sitting pretty and picturesque below a swirling sky of stars. His heart swelled under the constraints of his ribs, beating a steady rhythm of contentment as he curled up in his old, worn bed later that evening, the chatter of children still ringing in his ears. The dreams he'd had here. The desires that had emerged. How he'd cried and cursed and come, how he'd felt anguish and anger and arousal. His skin pressed against the familiar softness of the sheets and inhaling their old musky scent made him feel fifteen all over again and seeking comfort in his dorm, frustrated after a particularly cruel argument with Potter or an especially nasty comment from Pansy or another lost Quidditch match.

“It's just like the old days,” Potter whispered to him once he'd drifted into sleep. “But this time there's no more pain. No more fear. It's just life. We can be whatever we want. We can be with each other.”

“I doubt it. You didn't even glance at me during the Sorting.”

“You avoided me on the train,” he argued, and Draco scoffed.

“You probably didn't even notice,” he shot back.

“Probably,” Potter allowed, and Draco didn't have a lot of heart to protest anymore, not when he was trailing his hand up Draco's cheek, fingers brushing his temples. “Even if I did, the damage has already been done. You only ever tormented me in this Castle. How could we ever be lovers?”

“We couldn't,” Draco agreed, gaze caught on the way Potter's eyelashes fluttered against his skin. This was his own subconscious talking, and it always came to the same conclusion: impossible. They would only ever be rivals. “I do love you, though. Still. Always.”

“You do,” came the quiet reply. “More than anything.”

“More than anything,” Draco confirmed, and uttered the truth he'd been fearing for quite a while, now. “You might just be the one.”

“Merlin forbid,” Potter teased, and his laugh was so fucking beautiful it _ached_. Draco had never had it directed at him, not _really_ , but he'd seen it enough. Had committed it to memory, and now could recite by heart the way Potter's eyes crinkled and his head threw back and his mouth opened wide and joyful.

Draco knew his laugh well enough to construct a feasible version of it in his head, and it danced the night away in his dreams.

 

***

 

“Ah, Harry my dear boy!” Slughorn cried as Potter crept into Potions ten minutes late the next morning, sheepish expression frozen on his face. “Decided to join us, have you? Why, take a seat!”

Potter, disappointingly, hadn't been at breakfast. And now, arriving late with flushed cheeks and dishevelled hair, it was clear where he had been. Draco was simply grateful they didn't share classes with the seventh years- if he'd had to watch Ginny Weasley sneak in behind him, Draco may have had to leave and have his first cry in the bathroom for a while.

“Can I…?” It was quiet and close and it wasn't until he started at the familiar pull of the voice that he remembered the only spare seat in the room was beside him, agonisingly empty and just waiting for Potter's presence to grace it.

“Oh,” he uttered, and knew his cheeks were pinking. “Yes, I suppose you ought to.”

Potter smiled in thanks, and Draco's heart skipped a beat, stomach flipping in a sickeningly familiar way. Tingles burst upon his skin where their robes brushed accidentally, unnoticeable, and through the expected giddiness soaring through his mind, he berated himself. It had been years, yet every day sent him spiralling from the façade of composure he maintained into a lovestruck nervous wreck. Not that Potter had ever realised it. He'd had other things to worry about, and even so, for the Boy Who Lived, he was pretty oblivious. No, Granger was the shrewd one, shrewd so he didn't have to be. He had to be brave.

“Have I missed much?”

Potter was talking to him, to _him_ , and it wasn't cruel.

“Polyjuice Potion. You'll probably have to catch up. Copy Granger's notes, or something. It's quite advanced.”

Potter coughed in seeming surprise, shocked and amused, an odd smile playing at his mouth. His eyes were doing that distant thing again, staring down at his fingers on the desk, tracing patterns absent-mindedly with a faded focus. Draco couldn't remember seeing him so soft, so hushed and so _real_ , the outline of his features so distinguishable that it took Draco's breath away. His nose curved down so sweetly, and the way his eyelashes shadowed against his cheeks was almost sultry. The purse of his full lips, the twitch of his brow, the sharp edges of his infamous scar, it was all so intoxicating. Draco felt as if he could pore over his appearance for hours, could let his eyes graze Potter from the unruly mess of his hair to the dark planes of his feet. He was gorgeous and endless, a great wonder that Draco got lost in every time he spared it a glance.

Potter's notes were sparse and scrawled in handwriting that was almost unintelligible. Yet Draco was struck by the loops of his P's and the curls of his L's, smudged with ink. Their hands brushed as they moved to add the Lacewing Flies to the potion, shifting around the cauldron and unsuccessfully avoiding one another. The graze of his skin jolted straight to Draco's cock.

“Sorry,” Potter muttered after jostling Draco's arm again. It was a moment before he spoke again. “It's strange being back, isn't it?” he mused, brushing a wayward strand of hair back from his forehead.

“Yes,” Draco agreed, eyes following the movement of his fingers. “I was supposed to be beginning my fruitful career at the Ministry by now.”

"How did that work out?” Potter asked, grin curling at his mouth, and everything was perfect because _Potter was smiling at him_.

“Fantastic, as I'm sure you can tell,” Draco answered, the words tripping from his tongue without a second thought. His only method of speaking to Potter came through barbs coated in sarcasm, apparently. “That's why I'm in the Hogwarts Dungeons at age eighteen with _you_.”

“Sorry to disappoint. Maybe you'd find Neville to be better company?”

“Merlin, Potter, don't start.”

The lesson passed quickly, and Draco was light-headed by the time Potions finally ended, the students crowding out through the doors. Potter darted ahead of him to fall into line with Granger and Weasley, his voice joining theirs. They were an odd fit, those three, but somehow it worked. Somehow, it seemed as if ever seeing them apart would be an utter travesty. Draco hadn't forgotten the Battle, and he hadn't forgotten Potter's death. He hadn't forgotten the glimpse he'd seen of the bond Granger and Weasley had with Potter, crippling in strength and endless in depth, kind and selfless and unconditional. Draco wished he had seen it earlier, wished he'd not been so cruel all those years, that he'd had some respect for Potter and his friends.

“Happy, Draco?” The voice came unexpected, Pansy having sidled up behind him without his noticing. Her face was twisted in a smug smirk, and her eyes flickered to Potter's disappearing figure, shifting seamlessly into the throng milling throughout the corridor. Draco didn't need to watch him, though. His heart was full.

“Embarrassingly.”

 

***

 

“I have a job for you, Draco Malfoy.”

The words were hissed, sibilance slipping from a voice that dripped with sadism. Red was all Draco saw. Red was all he'd ever seen: red anger and red robes and the red blood of want. It made him shiver in terror, because this red was different. Those reds had been alive, but this was perhaps the most dead colour he'd ever seen, now. Brash and glaring for the hell of it. Pointless, eroding, a small dosage of brutality delivered through the slits of two hateful eyes. The figure before him was nothing short of hideous, his unnaturally ugly features warped in a hungry snarl. Excitement. Ardour. Want. Draco knew those emotions all too well, but he had never felt them in the way Tom Riddle had. Had never had them directed toward bloodshed.

“Anything, my Lord,” he replied, and his voice sounded high and cold to him despite the churning fear in his chest, threatening to encompass him. All of this seemed as if it was coming through a lens, like he wasn't really here, trapped and tormented in his own home. He wasn't himself. This tall, blonde Deatheater he was portraying wasn't him.

In return, Draco received a smile. It was wan but sinister; it sat frozen in his stomach with dread, still and ready to pounce, a dormant predator. Because that was what Voldemort did. He could instill enough fear that he didn't need to threaten- a smile was enough to shock Draco silent, send his hands shaking so much he had to keep them clenched under the table in case the Dark Lord noticed. It was a sign of weakness, and the Dark Lord wouldn't like that.

“I want you to kill Albus Dumbledore.”

Draco awoke in an instant.

Perspiration was damp on his skin, his hands trembling just at they had once done so when he'd been asked to complete Voldemort's mission. He gasped for air, panting, dizzy. His dream had been more of a memory than anything else, and it had occurred exactly as he remembered it. Not one detail out of place. From the sharp, bitter sting of his despair to the ravenous glint of thirst in Voldemort's scarlet eyes. Feeling faintly sick, Draco spared the room a glance. His roommates slept on, though none of them peaceful as they did so, tossing and turning so frequently it was as if they were competing. A void hung between Greg and Theo, an awful reminder.

Vince's empty bed was heavier than his presence had ever been, empty and endless, a black hole of misery.

Draco's heart tugged, and he threw the covers back, shifting until his feet hit the cold stone of the floor, sending a shudder through him. As he passed Vince's bed, he spared it a glance, anguish aching in his bones, bile rising in his throat. It wasn't until he reached outside that his nausea began to fade, feet bare on the damp grass, pyjama trousers trailing in the wet dark. His clothes were thin, letting the wind cut right through to his skin, chilling, but the cold was a distraction from the grief beginning to unfold in him. He'd cried over Vince. Gone to his funeral. Watched Greg's face crumple in pain, and berated himself for not respecting those two more, treating them as if they were just henchmen and not, in actuality, his friends. Vince hadn't turned out brilliantly in the end, but Draco had known him a long time, and it hurt to watch him be lowered into the ground. Here, he stared out at the grounds of Hogwarts and tried to stem the tide of sorrow, feeling the rush of memories overcome him. So many days spent here, and he had taken each one of them for granted.

Suddenly, a shift.

It wasn't the rustle of the wind through the trees, but instead a figure, sprawled on the grass as if they had fallen. They scrambled to their feet, looking around hurriedly before they swung a cloak around themselves. In the moonlight, Draco caught a glimpse of untidy hair, saw the build of the person ahead of him, and knew. The cloak covered him, and then he was gone.

Potter. It was always Potter.

Curious, Draco followed the depressed blades of grass right down to the Forbidden Forest, traced the footsteps along the dirt track to a clearing, where subsequently, Potter lay on the ground, spread-eagled. His invisibility cloak was abandoned a few metres away, crumpled in a ball. Potter's chest rose and fell steadily, and the shining white of the moon grazed his face so tenderly, pulling at the affection in Draco. His dark skin, his delicate twist of features, his messy hair. He was beautiful. Always, always, always.

“Forgotten how to sleep in a real bed?”

Draco's voice was harsh in the silence, and Potter startled, scrabbling to sit up and grabbing for his wand. Eyes wide and reckless defence shaping his expression, he propelled his hand forward, aiming his wand at Draco with instinctual expertise. When he saw who it was, however, he sighed. Relaxed, lowered his wand.

“Oh,” he said. “It's you.”

“Congratulations, Potter, your glasses really _do_ seem to be working.”

It almost made him wince. It felt impossible to escape that cycle of cruel teasing, so much so that even now, after everything, Draco couldn't be civil. He had to result to nasty jabs and taunts to get Potter to look, and that was just ridiculous, wasn't it? How long had it been? Six years? Seven? And he still couldn't maintain a simple conversation. Pathetic.

“Fuck off, Malfoy,” Potter retaliated, but there was no bite. His eyes were tired and so was his voice. He glanced away all too quickly, gaze dropping to the ground.

“I can do whatever I please,” Draco replied haughtily, and in a sudden burst of ridiculous impulse, sunk down opposite Potter. “You don't own this particular clearing, as far as I know. I have every right to be here. Just like you.”

“Actually, neither of us do,” Potter pointed out. “We're supposed to be in bed.”

“Then why are you out here?”

“Couldn't sleep.”

Draco snorted. “We have that in common.”

It was eerily quiet between them as the night moved on, unaware of the unsteady rhythm of Draco's heart. The wind swept past in tranquil song, ruffling through Potter's hair. Potter, in turn, tilted his head back, eyes shut against the breeze, an odd sort of agony illustrated in his expression. He sighed out exhales in line with it, and Draco was entranced, so caught up in him that he could barely feel it himself. Such peace. Such pain. Potter was a brilliant storm, and he seemed at home in the wind, quiet and withdrawn in a way he rarely was.

“I died here, you know,” he said off-handedly after a little while, eyes finally peeling open to stare at the rich obsidian of the sky. “This is where I let him kill me.”

“You let him,” Draco repeated, mouth dry. He knew, of course, had read the interview. But Potter had diminished it to nothing less than an afterthought- Snape was good, Potter was a Horcrux, he died to kill Voldemort. But it was more than that. So much more. He'd walked from Dumbledore's office to here, knowing, like a pit in his stomach, that he had to die. Draco couldn't even dream of that bravery, could barely believe it existed at all. But, then. Potter was a bloody miracle walking, made up of patchwork spells and the power of love. He'd faced down Voldemort half a dozen times and still felt the wind on his face with a bittersweet contentment in his expression.

“I've never felt so alive as I did before death,” he confessed, a hopeful smile curving his mouth. “It was when I knew this place was home. Home in a way nowhere else could ever be. It was when I knew that this terrifying thing we call life had meaning. Had purpose.”

“And yours was to die?”

“I should never have lived at all.”

Draco wanted to shake him. Potter was the most alive person he'd ever met, the most human human there was. If he'd died that night in Godric's Hollow then where would that leave Draco? Where would that leave the entirety of the Wizarding World? Without him, they didn't mean much at all. He was better than all of them, he made them _good_. Put them to _shame_ , made all of this great chaos worth living.

“You're...” Draco's voice was stuck in his throat. He swallowed. “We wouldn't be here without you. Don't, you shouldn't… don't say that.”

“Is that a _compliment_ , Malfoy?” Potter asked, surprise infecting his voice, but it was accompanied by humour. If anything, Potter appeared to be _amused_.

“A statement.”

“I'll take it.”

Potter was smiling, all pain gone from him now. Awestruck, Draco let his eyes track the bend of Potter's neck, the warm span of his face under the moon; it was so raw and so honest, and it was tearing Draco apart by the second. Their eyes caught, and for a few intimate seconds, everything was enough. Their friends were dead and they had been left tattered by the atrocities of war, but now, looking at Potter's eyes reflecting in the starlight, it was enough. They would rebuild. They would heal. There was another side to this horror, and they only had to keep going.

 _You're brilliant and perfect and I'm in love with you_ , Draco wanted to say, _you saved us all and_ _I_ _will never forget it._

_You are the bravest and most wonderful person I’ve ever known._

_It has always been you._

Dawn broke unceremoniously, mere hours later, and Draco hadn't said a word since their brief conversation. The night drifted into nothingness, the darkness faded, and Draco Malfoy couldn't remember a happier time.

 

***

 

“Sorry, Malfoy.”

Ron Weasley made a slow, drunken attempt to wipe the Firewhiskey from Draco's now-damp Dementor robe. Weasley, on the other hand, was dressed in an amusing attire of pink, clearly portraying Umbridge for Halloween this year. Draco bit back a smile at the sight of it, reminded of Granger's depiction of a Centaur he'd caught a glimpse of earlier. It was perhaps the funniest couples costume here, rivalled only by Finnigan and Thomas' Quaffle and goal hoop idea.

“Leave it,” Draco allowed. “Don't worry about it. Get back to Granger.”

Weasley smiled in a warm, delayed manner before stumbling away, heading toward what Draco presumed was his girlfriend, in some distant corner of the Gryffindor common room. Draco felt out of place here, but he couldn't deny it inspired some feeling of distant joy in him. It was warm and cosy and a far cry from the cold and barren atmosphere of the Slytherin common room. It was Potter all over, from the crackling fire sparking in the hearth to the scarlet spread of the room. Speaking of Potter, he was here now, slumped on one of the sofas near Draco. He was flushed and loose-limbed in his intoxication, eyes roving around the room and finally coming to rest upon Draco, who of course, was looking right back at him.

“M'lfoy,” he slurred, and Draco was sober enough to know speaking to Potter was a bad idea at a party like this, but just drunk enough to do it anyway. He moved past Potter to settle beside him, their thighs a hairsbreadth apart.

“Potter.”

“What…” A frown furrowed his brow. “Are you a Dementor?”

“Scared?”

“You _wish_ ,” Potter sneered, but he was grinning, floppy and sluggish where he sat. A thin sheet was slung across his body, wrapped slack across his torso and shoulder. The arch of the sheet exposed the rise of his nipple, and the other was visible through the flimsy linen twisted across his chest. Draco was half-hard just looking. “I'm a House Elf.”

“I can tell.”

Potter swallowed. “I'm really drunk.”

“Do you need some air?”

“I'm.” Potter's eyes were drooping, and he stared, unfocused, at Draco. “I don't know. My head hurts.”

“You're very drunk.”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly decisive, Draco lurched to his feet, swaying as he extended a hand to Potter, who smiled up at him and grasped onto his forearm, hand like a hot brand. With a tiny groan, Draco hauled him up in no time, arm folding around his waist. Potter was pressed deliciously along his side as Draco helped him up the stairs, a warm, compact weight that had him far more aroused than he should be. Head spinning, Draco somehow managed to find the correct door and stumble in, dislodging Potter from him so he could stagger to one of the beds, practically collapsing on it. Hit with a wave of want, Draco averted his eyes, heading over to the window and pushing it open with a creak, which was deafening amidst the silence and faint, muffled sound of music from downstairs. Seeing Potter in here, on his own bed, it was utterly overwhelming. Draco had imagined this place a thousand times, imagined that Potter was staring up at the ceiling and thinking of him.

“Water?” he asked, clearing his throat.

“Please,” Potter replied, shifting, pressing his cheek into the pillow. “Why a Dementor? I thought you'd organise something with Parkinson. It probably wouldn't be as good as Ron and Hermione's costumes, but still. She's a cat, right?”

“Me and _Pansy_?” Draco questioned, barking a short laugh at the thought. “Merlin's _beard_ , no. I'm gay and so is she. Daphne's dressed as the Filch to her Mrs. Norris.”

“ _Oh_.” Potter tried to nod, hindered by the tangle of sheets on the bed. “You're gay?”

“It's not a secret.”

“How did you know?”

“That I was gay?” _You_. “I don't know. I just… knew.”

“Ginny's gay.”

The world seemed to stop. Draco's hand shook as he poured Potter's water, accidentally sloshing it onto the windowsill as he did so. A rush of dangerous hope surged in him, molten in the pit of his stomach. He felt hot all over. Ginny Weasley. _Gay_. Which meant…

“That's why after the war, you two never…?” Draco crept toward the bed, handing the water over to a reclined Potter. He perched on the mattress next to him, throat dry. Potter sat up blearily, taking the glass, eyes misty and vague as he peered at Draco. His hair was stuck up on one side, made even more unruly than usual by his rest against the bed.

“Yeah. Her and Luna, they…” Potter didn't seem sad, simply matter-of-fact and fairly _thirsty_ , pausing so he could gulp down the water. “I don't think it was just her that didn't want to get back together, though. I didn't either, she just got the words out before I did.” A droplet of water had beaded upon his lower lip, and his tongue poked out to suck it up. Draco stared, transfixed. “Charlie's gay, you know. Ron's brother. Over the summer, we… I don't know. Maybe I…”

_Maybe I._

His eyes were heavy lidded as his gaze fell to Draco's mouth, his own lips pursed in sweet confusion and delicate curiosity. Splashes of water fell against the floor where Potter's hand sagged. Draco's breath caught and his prick _throbbed_ , a hundred different scenarios seizing him as Potter leant ever-so-slightly into his space, breath ghosting over Draco's face in a wave of alcohol and desire. His hand pitched forward, palm landing above Draco's knee, fingers curling in against the sensitive flesh of his inner thigh. How he didn't notice the hard ridge of Draco's raging erection was a mystery.

“Harry,” Draco breathed, the word caught in a whimper, and Harry's eyes were closing.

His head drooped in woozy exhaustion, quite literally passing out where he sat, and Draco groaned in frustrated arousal and disappointment, eyes squeezing shut. Pushing Harry back against his pillows, Draco prised the glass from his fingers before it tipped completely over, placing it on the bedside cabinet. He took a moment to simply look, watching Potter in his slumber as he only had once before, all those years ago after Sirius Black had supposedly broken into the Castle. His expression was no longer lax in youthful peace as it once had been: now, he frowned. No wonder- his previous trauma was immense, and Voldemort may have been gone, but he would undoubtedly remain in Harry's mind evermore. In his memories, his dreams, his every waking thought.

Draco wished he could erase it all.

 

***

 

“Potter.”

“How do you always know where I'll be?”

“I don't,” Draco replied, watching as Harry stared out at the grounds from their position in the Astronomy Tower. The air between them was cold and cutting, and Draco felt sixteen and terrified all over again. “I suppose there are simply a lot of instances where our paths crossed, in the past.”

“I suppose,” Harry sighed. His fingers danced upon the stone of the wall, running his hand along the battlements. It was almost exactly where Dumbledore had died, if Draco remembered correctly. Harry had been there, hidden. “I don't blame you, you know. Not for Dumbledore. Not for any of it, really.”

“The way I treated you...”

“You were a child,” Harry cut in. His tone was sharp and Draco's stomach fluttered in anticipation. “We both were. Now, after everything, a few nasty remarks once in a while… they don't seem all that important.”

“For what it's worth, I _am_ sorry.”

“Thank you.” Harry turned to him, then, face serene in the moonlight. There was an expression of earnest anxiety shaping his features. “You're everywhere at the moment, Malfoy. Wherever I turn, you're there. Why are you always there?”

“I could say the same about you,” Draco returned, and Harry smiled in wry amusement. “Why did you come back here? To Hogwarts, I mean. You could be anywhere right now. You could be doing anything.”

“I love this place,” Harry murmured, and his face was so honest and open and true. Draco was so deeply and irrevocably in love with him that it hurt. “I mean, I _love_ this place. It's my home. I know the Prophet paints me as some great war hero but I'm _not._ I was just a boy and I was _so_ _scared_ , all of the time. I'm not ready to grow up yet. I never really had the chance to in the first place. I think I've got some catching up to do.”

“Why can't war heroes be scared?”

“I don't know.” Harry swallowed. “I think I might be gay.”

“Oh.” Butterflies plummeted in Draco's stomach. “You might be.”

“I snogged Charlie Weasley this summer,” Harry confessed, and the envy that coursed through Draco was like nothing he'd experienced before. Not with Ginny Weasley and not with Cho Chang. That had been different- Harry had been completely unobtainable back then. But now… “The air in the Burrow was so thick with grief, and we just… I told myself it was because we were both mourning Fred and wanted to feel something, but now I'm not so sure anymore.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You're gay. We aren't close. It makes it easier, I guess.”

“You have a lifetime ahead of you to figure it out,” Draco offered. His whole body was trembling, shivering. “You made sure of that. You have forever.”

“None of this feels real,” Harry said, and Draco hoped he was imagining the break in his voice. He understood, though. This entire interaction appeared to have walked straight out of one of Draco's dreams. “After the war it was like everyone… _resumed_. Got on with their lives. Ron and Hermione, Luna and Ginny, Dean and Seamus. And I'm stuck standing still. I'm trapped in the past. I dream of it every night, you know. Of Voldemort. Of everyone I lost. That's why I'm here instead of in bed.”

“I know,” Draco whispered. “I know. I'm the same, I… he's always there.”

“You didn't have it easy either, did you?” Harry asked, and guilt burnt low in Draco's heart.

“Not like you,” Draco muttered. “I can't imagine, what you... I can't imagine, Potter.”

“It's not a competition. We were just kids,” Harry uttered, voice a clear finality. “We were kids, and we didn't deserve any of it.”

“Aren't we still?”

 

***

 

Christmas came forth quickly that year, December tumbling forward until Draco was trussing up gifts for his friends and placing them below the great, communal Christmas tree in the common room. Christmas the year before had been almost unnoticeable- the Carrows hadn't seemed to care much for it. Instead, it had been nothing but a usual day, as bare and barren as any other. Draco had found himself missing Dumbledore and his usual melodrama when it came to the holidays, but had been promptly distracted by fearing for his and his classmates' lives.

This year, however, McGonagall had decided to follow triumphantly in the footsteps of Dumbledore, seemingly taking it upon herself to make the celebration even bigger and better than normal. Holly and ivy illustrated the walls of Hogwarts and the entire place was decorated red and green, right to the rafters. It even _smelt_ like pine. It reminded Draco a little of that Valentine's Day when Lockhart worked here, but far more tasteful and much less cloying. Valentine's day of second year. That painful, fateful day.

“Going home for Christmas?” Harry asked one December day, looking up at Draco from the essay he was writing. There hadn't been any tables available in the library, so Harry had sat opposite Draco with an imploring expression thrown his way and a reluctant shift to his movements.

“To the _Manor?_ No. Mother's going to her sister's, I believe, and I'm staying here. That place isn't exactly _homely_ anymore. Are you going to the Weasley's?”

“Not this year,” Harry replied. “The loss of Fred is still… fresh. A family Christmas would be hard on everyone, I think. Ron and Ginny are staying here. So am I.”

“I'm sorry about… him.” Draco swallowed, uncomfortable all of a sudden. A pause swung between them, awkward but not hostile. “Is this small talk?”

Harry laughed, brash and surprised. It was a real laugh, a sincere laugh, like one of those laughs Draco had seen Granger or Weasley induce from him that had sent a hot touch of jealousy curling through him. He'd wanted to draw that from him, a genuine reaction that was something other than anger. Now, they weren't friends, but… they were enough for Draco to make Harry laugh. They weren't rivals, at the very least.

“I think so,” Harry agreed, smirking, and Draco was more than a little bit in love with the twist of his mouth. “Merlin's beard, who would have thought it? Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Being civil.”

Civil. Draco would take it.

Snow fell thick and fast mid-month, cold and crisp as it lined the grounds of Hogwarts. It extended all the way to Hogsmeade, making the trip chilling and festive when Draco attended it with his friends. It almost felt like the old days, if he forgot his ban from the Three Broomsticks that had remained since sixth year. It stung a little, being forced away from the place he had frequented for years, though he couldn't quite blame Madam Rosmerta for doing so. Over his mug of Butterbeer at the Hog's Head, however, Harry smiled at him, and then it didn't seem to matter all that much.

Pansy eyed him, a smile of her own toying at her mouth, and she hid it in Daphne's shoulder, a horribly tender move. Draco felt a warm rush of affection for her, for them both, and wondered in the midst of high fantasy if by the end of the year, he'd have his very own shoulder to hide a smile in. Harry. Always Harry. Harry who might just be gay, Harry who was staying at Hogwarts this Christmas, Harry who Draco had loved and loved and loved.

But nothing would happen. Not really. Draco knew it, but this time it felt so _close_ , so within his grasp, so he couldn't deprive himself from the sick hope it brought. Each casual, meaningless smile Harry threw his way felt like a personal gift, ones he dragged to the forefront of his mind each night, fist tight around his cock.

Yet Harry was ever oblivious, or so Draco had thought.

“Merry Christmas, Malfoy,” he said on Christmas day, wrapped in a new Weasley sweater, flanked by his two friends. He looked happy, despite everything. Draco had the privilege of sitting opposite him for the Christmas feast, and he'd never felt quite so warm and satisfied. He smiled back, helpless, no longer caring that Granger, and perhaps even Weasley, could see his pathetic schoolboy adoration. Harry was beautiful and had been drinking down Elderflower wine like Pumpkin juice, spreading a dark flush along his cheekbones.

“Merry Christmas, Potter,” came his own response, voice but a quiet croak, desire burning hot in the pit of his stomach.

_I love you._

So they drank and they ate like the war hadn't occurred at all. Pansy laughed at something Granger said and for a short, tremulous moment, the two smiled at one another. There had been so much unnecessary enmity between the Slytherins and everyone else, and it was a relief to feel it begin to melt away like snow, dissolving to nothingness before winter came to a close. As the feast started to diminish, the remaining eighth year Hufflepuffs offered to host a post-feast gathering in their common room, promising leftovers of dinner due to their lucky position near the kitchens. Instead of joining everybody, however, Harry grabbed him by the wrist as they exited the Hall and steered him away, somehow inconspicuous in his drunken state.

“I love alcohol,” Harry said, grinning widely as they staggered over to the Quidditch Pitch in the dark, giggling like fools. Draco could scarcely see his steps, could only see the cold puffs of his breath, but at this point, he didn't care. He would follow Harry anywhere, especially here and now, after years of hatred. Draco finally had a million opportunities to be near him all he wanted, and he'd be damned if he surrendered a single one.

“I love _Quidditch_ ,” he countered, and Harry laughed so hard it sounded as if it had been punched from his chest, shocked and gorgeous. He careered forward onto the Pitch, arms stretched out wildly as he made it to the centre, head tilted back against the soft rush of wind, an action he seemed to do a _lot_.

“I love Hogwarts,” he murmured, arms open and eyes fixed on the dark sky. There was rapture in his expression, and Draco remembered faintly that this boy had _died_. Had given his life so his friends could live. Of course the wind and the sky were beautiful to him. Harry Potter knew, better than anyone, how to live. “I love it, _I love it_. I don't want to leave. Not ever.”

“We have to, one day.”

“I know,” Harry admitted. “That scares me more than most things.”

“What do you think you'll do, after this? Go home?”

“ _This_ is my home,” Harry corrected, gaze dropping to Draco, where he stared at him with feverish intensity. “Not Privet Drive. My relatives hated me, you know. I lived in a cupboard for ten years.”

“A _cupboard_?”

“You didn't know?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Thought I was raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, servants waiting on me hand and foot, did you? No, Malfoy, that was _you_ -”

Draco was kissing him, then, and he couldn't have helped it even if he'd tried. Simply lurched forward without thought, grasped Harry's face in his hands and _kissed_ him, hard and honest, the way he'd always wanted to. His eyes were clenched shut so tight colours burst behind his eyes and his hands were shaking so badly against Harry's cheeks that it couldn't really be called a _grasp_ , but his heart was beating so fast he couldn't even feel it. He felt light and alive, love arching in him so strong it was scorching. Harry Potter. Draco was kissing for the second time in his life, and it was everything, everything.

Then Harry was kissing him back.

It tasted of wine and want and joy, and Draco nearly wept at the reciprocation, the warm press of Harry's tongue against his own a literal dream come true. Harry's hands found their way to Draco's waist, encircling him, fingers dragging against the spot below his ribs, hot through his robes. It was freezing out here, the wind a howling storm, and Draco was ankle-deep in wet snow. He couldn't feel a thing. His whole body was numb, singing Harry's praises. Tears pricked at Draco's eyes. The world could've been on fire and Draco wouldn't stop kissing him, wouldn't let go of this brilliant, beautiful boy, not even if his life depended on it.

"Malfoy,” Harry whispered, and his hand found Draco's wrist. He stepped back from Draco, his warm body a sudden loss, letting the cold winter hit at his fresh absence. They were still tethered, however, tied by the ring of Harry's fingers. Draco let himself be led, stumbling along behind Harry to the broomshed. The door banged shut behind them and the warmth was utterly encompassing, suffocating.

“Harry,” Draco murmured, and Harry leant forward to push their mouths together, teeth coming out to graze at Draco's lip. Draco had been hard since they'd first left the Hall, really, arousal jumping at the prospect of being alone together, but now it was becoming unbearable. His pulse was spiking at Harry's closeness, and he was, admittedly, drunk, but aware enough to speculate whether or not this was truly happening. He'd dreamt it so many times.

Draco dropped to his knees without second thought, gazing up at Harry with wide eyes. Harry swallowed, swaying back against the wall, lip caught between his teeth. A moan petered from his throat, and Draco pushed aside his robes, fumbling with the clasp of Harry's trousers. His own cock was straining, but he was too lost in Harry to care. He kept his hands settled on the juts of Harry's hipbones and urged forward until his cock bumped the back of his throat. Draco had never done this before, but had imagined it enough to know that he _could_. Harry's fingers were tight in his hair but his clasp was gentle and it had Draco panting like no tomorrow, his whole being bursting with the knowledge that Harry James Potter _wanted_ him.

It didn't matter that it was done drunk in the broomshed, and not sober on Draco's soft four-poster like he'd dreamed most often. He'd imagined it everywhere at least once: empty classrooms, the Room of Requirement, even the bloody Great Hall, sometimes.

It was Harry. Draco would take what he could get.

Speaking of Harry, he looked beautiful like this, not that it was any surprise to Draco, per se. His eyes were shut and his hair was wild, snowflakes dotting it like tiny stars, a windswept and starstruck mess. Tiny, laboured breaths escaped him as Draco pushed further, tried harder. He'd never been so hard in his life. In the end, Harry bested him by minutes. His own desire grew too much and he came with a cry muffled by Harry's cock, driven over the edge by a particularly sweet moan on Harry's part. He was so fucking _lovely,_ and it was enough to get Draco off without a touch like he was fourteen all over again, watching Harry take on a dragon headfirst and _win_. When Harry finally finished, a gasp catching in his throat as he spilled in Draco's mouth, he sunk to the floor next to him, reaching fervently for Draco's own trousers.

“It's fine, I. It's fine,” Draco assured, watching as Harry's expression shifted in realisation when his fingers brushed Draco's crotch. He nodded in understanding, still huffing out his breaths.

“That was… unexpected,” Harry said, barely restraining a smile. Draco was helpless to do anything but return it, more in love each time their eyes met.

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“Good,” he reassured, pressing a short kiss to the corner of Draco's mouth. “Definitely good.”

“Better than Weasley?”

“I never got that far. With either of them.” Harry smiled, and it was dreamy in the moonlit dark, only visible due to the windows further up the walls. “It's only been you.”

“Me too,” Draco admitted, soft in his disbelief and his great, unbelievable gratitude.

“Really? I have to say, I'm surprised. I thought you would've been off shagging boys every day of the week, back then.”

“No,” he replied. “No, I didn't have the time. I was too busy bullying _you_.”

“Why did you torment me all those years?” Harry asked, voice vulnerable and small, and Draco had thought his previous words had been indication enough, but clearly not. It was humiliating; he had far too much pride to tell the truth about his embarrassing and longitudinal infatuation.

“I don't know,” he mumbled. “I was an idiot.”

Harry grinned as if to say _you're right about that_ , and all seemed forgotten. He kissed Draco one last time, lingering and slow, and Draco's heart surged. This was all he had ever wanted. All he had dreamt of for years upon years, and now it was happening not a moment of it felt real. He worried that a simple move would dislodge the illusion, that he'd blink and Harry would be gone, a phantom disappearing into the night. But for now, he was a solid weight to sleep beside, one that had Draco's eyes fluttering shut as he attempted to drink down the sight of Harry one last time. He needed to.

When he awoke, he was alone.

 

***

 

The next time Draco Malfoy saw Harry Potter, his heart broke.

The morning after Christmas was like any other day, and Harry barely glanced at him during breakfast, which was understandable. Why would he? Draco was nothing special. But then he went unnoticed the day after, and then after that, and so on. Nearly a whole week passed without word, which quite honestly, was a little odd. Draco watched Harry kiss Parvati Patil at New Year's and felt tears threaten his eyes, agonising want swooping low in his stomach. Had he dreamt that brilliant Christmas night? Surely _some_ of it had happened- he'd awoken in the broomshed, after all, cold and sated where he lay. Perhaps it had been Ernie Macmillan instead, and Draco had simply fantasised it to be Harry.

Perhaps.

“You did _what_?” Pansy screeched once he finally told her, early January with sorrow thick in his voice.

“Sucked him off,” he answered. “It clearly meant nothing to him.”

“Potter?” she questioned. “ _Harry_ Potter? The boy you've been in love with since second year?”

“ _Yes_. It was Christmas and we were drunk. He thinks he might be gay. Or… thought.”

“So he finally broke your heart?”

“Finally,” Draco confirmed. “About time, I suppose.”

He wept well into the night.

Draco was both overjoyed and desolate. On the one hand, Harry Potter, his great and unachievable dream, had been fulfilled. But on the other, it had been short-lived and had caused more pain than necessary. Was it worth it? Yes. But did it hurt? Yes. He felt more teenage than ever, crying himself sick over a brief and meaningless tryst with a boy, but Merlin be damned if it didn't feel like the most terrible thing in the world. Harry wasn't just any boy. It was _Harry_ , Harry who he had loved _forever_ , who he had thought of in his darkest moments and dreamed of in his lightest, who could simply smile his way and shift the turning of the universe, tip the world on its axis.

Potions was Draco's first lesson when school recommenced, and Harry slid into his now-usual seat without even an acknowledgement of Draco beside him. He didn't even _look_ until they began brewing Amortentia, fixing his eyes on Draco and offering to grab ingredients for both of them from the cupboard. Draco nodded his feeble thanks, hands shaking as Harry turned away, heart sore but set. This was how Harry planned to handle it, it seemed. By ignoring it. There was nothing Draco could do to stop that. It had certainly happened before- Blaise did it to nearly every girl, the bastard, and Theo had once been avoided steadfastly by Sue Li after a surprising snog at a sixth year party. It _happened_. Sue Li and Theo had eventually spoken again, and had grown to laugh about it all these years later.

That was them. Theo wasn't in love with Sue Li. Draco, however…

“Good luck, Malfoy,” Harry teased, moments before the Gryffindor vs Slytherin Quidditch Match, beginning a little later this year due to poor organisation on McGonagall's part. Nobody could blame her, though. She'd had to pull a school together after a war.

Harry beat him. Again. Of course.

His face was twisted in triumph as he snatched the Snitch from under Draco's nose, and perhaps it was Draco's age and newfound maturity, or maybe he was just too sad, but he couldn't bring himself to care all that much about the defeat. Slytherin hadn't beat Gryffindor for years. What could he have expected? To _win_? To have his fingers touch the Golden Snitch first, and have Harry look at him in impressed surprise? To have Harry kiss him, high above the Pitch, slow and long and real? Draco could always hope.

Voldemort's laugh was cold and callous in his mind, everlasting. Dreams of Harry weren't there to fend him off.

“I'm sorry,” Granger said to him one day, their hands brushing as they reached for the same book.

“It's no matter. Feel free, Granger.”

“Thank you,” she uttered, and her voice was clear. “Really though, Malfoy. I'm sorry. About... him.”

“ _What_?”

Draco's blood ran cold, and his exclamation was but a mere whisper. There was a knowing in Granger's words, words that wouldn't make sense unless Harry had told her what had transpired that Christmas night. Her expression was kind and pitying, an expression she hadn't directed toward him since the trial, sat across from him beside Harry, just before he had taken the stand. Draco hadn't been able to find it in himself to resent her- he had needed understanding, then, however infuriating it may have been. Now, it wasn't all that dissimilar.

“He's… _you_ know him,” she whispered. “What he's like. Especially now.”

“I've never known him to be a coward,” Draco spat back, the bitter hurt soaring in him, as fresh and new as it had that morning. “I thought Gryffindors were meant to be _brave_.”

“He's not a _coward_ ,” she hissed, the frizz of her hair flying angry around her face, “he's just _lost_. I'm sorry if he hurt you, _really_ I am, but it hasn't been an easy run for him these last months. He _should_ talk to you. He's an idiot for not doing so, and he'd _kill_ me if he knew I was speaking to you, but please… cut him some slack?”

“Granger-”

“Hermione?”

Weasley had appeared around the shelves and was striding toward them with an odd, curious look on his face. It took Draco a split-second to understand that it was only Granger that knew about that night- Weasley was as clueless as ever. It was the only explanation that made sense of the near-envious glare Weasley was throwing him. As if _Draco_ was competition for his girlfriend... it was laughable.

“I should go,” she said to him. “Just… remember what I said.”

It was all Draco could think about the next time Harry sat by his side in Potions, pretending like their dynamic was what it had once been.

 

***

 

Valentine's day was by far the least important holiday of the year, in Draco's opinion, but after the war, things had apparently changed. Draco supposed it made sense, considering the impossibility for romance the year before. Now, it was almost as sickening as it had been during Lockhart's time at Hogwarts, complete with decorations stretching to every corner of the Castle and couples snogging wherever possible. He'd expected McGonagall to have something to say about it, but she just looked on with a fond, nostalgic smile and ushered the offending students to class. She was no Umbridge.

More than anything, it was a depressing affair for Draco. All his friends appeared to have paired off- Pansy and Daphne, Greg and Millie, Theo and Tracey. Blaise was eyeing up Padma, as far as Draco knew. Draco, on the other hand, was significantly lonely. It wasn't as if he hadn't been every _other_ Valentine's day, but this one stung especially. Harry had been so accidentally and casually cruel. It wasn't as if Draco hadn't deserved it, he hadn't _half_ been awful to him and his friends for years, but it was _agony_.

To Harry, Draco was sure that night had been nothing but an experimental and temporary test as to whether or not he was exclusively interested in men. Considering he had kissed Parvati, it seemed he had his answer. He hadn't done it to _hurt_ Draco, that he was sure of. Draco had kissed _him_ , and Harry had gone with it. Draco had dropped to his knees without thought, and Harry simply hadn't refused. Of course, to Draco, that night had been everything. But how could Harry possibly know that? It was a one night stand. People did them all the time.

Harry Potter. Perhaps this chapter in Draco's life was well and truly over.

“Malfoy.”

The voice came from Draco's left, and he turned to see Harry taking a seat beside him in the Hog's Head, where he had decided to nurse a Butterbeer instead of joining his friends in Madam Puddifoot's as an awkward add-on. He immediately regretted this decision at the sight of Harry bloody Potter.

“Potter.”

His voice trembled.

“I talked to Pansy Parkinson yesterday,” Harry remarked, not looking at him, eyes instead focused on the bar.

Oh _fuck_.

“Hermione Granger said some things to me, the other week,” Draco retaliated, and Harry only laughed.

“Of course she did,” he sighed, wearied. “About Christmas...”

“Please don't,” Draco begged, unwilling to hear the full and complete sever of whatever they could've had. “I understand.”

“I don't think you _do_ -”

“I _do_! Potter, I understand just _fine_ ,” he snapped, rising in panic from his seat at the bar. Hysteria built in him and his voice climbed in volume, and a few people started glancing over. Draco was too upset to care. “I get it. It was a mistake. You don't want me. You could've just _said_. You didn't have to _leave_.”

“Malfoy-”

“You asked why I tormented you all those years? This is why. _This_. I _fancied_ you, Potter,” he snarled, watching as Harry's mouth fell open in shock. The words were gracelessly tumbling from his mouth, and he was helpless to stop them. “I was desperate for your attention, as ridiculous as it sounds. You were all I ever thought about. I _wanted_ you. I cried over you. I would've _died_ for you. Pathetic, I know, but that doesn't change it. You want to know the worst part? I _still_ fucking want you. I love you, Harry, I've loved you for years. And you _left_ me.”

The Hog's Head was deadly silent, and Harry stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes. His expression was frozen in horror, and it was all the answer Draco needed. Draco had just let on his deepest and darkest secret, and all the years he'd spent stifling it now seemed pointless. It had only saved to drive away the person he loved most.

Without a second thought he turned, storming from the pub and out into the swirling white winter of the outside world. The cold cut at his cheeks, stinging so starkly at the speed he was travelling at, striding and crunching through the snow with a desperate desire to _escape_. Bitter tears began to build behind his eyes, heart heavy in his chest. Of course this was where it had ended: Draco snivelling like a child as he pushed onwards to Hogsmeade High Street. Snow bore down on him as he swallowed back his sorrow, wet on his face and his robes, the chill reaching right down to the bone. It had been snowing that Christmas night, where they had first kissed. It was snowing now.

It had been Valentine's day when Draco had first wanted him all those years ago, where it had started. It was Valentine's day where it ended. Poetic.

Nobody around him knew that his heart had been shattered into pieces mere moments ago. They simply carried on, unaware, like most life did. The buzz of chatter around him was nothing but a distant din, echoing in his ears and his aching, wistful love. If only…

“Malfoy!”

Draco barely had time to turn before he glanced Harry running toward him, and then he was on him, hands fastening in his hair and mouth pushing against his. A pathetic sound of surprised want fell from Draco's mouth but was instead swallowed by Harry, _Harry_ , who was kissing him and kissing him like he'd die if he didn't. His mouth was wet and warm and this time, Draco was stone cold sober. His heart lifted, completely unbothered by the sudden notice taken by those around them, the flurry of gasps that rushed down the street.

“I'm sorry,” Harry said, pulling away. He'd pushed a woolly hat down over his curls, and his hair was tangled in his face. This close, Draco was sure he could count each of his eyelashes. He was so endlessly beautiful. “I was scared, and I'm sorry. I panicked. Things with you were different than they were with Charlie. I _liked_ you- I have since Halloween. It was _real_. I woke up that morning and I realised there wasn't a chance I was anything but gay. My solution was to ignore it. Pretend it didn't happen. And that was wrong. I'm sorry.”

“But… Parvati Patil. On New Years-”

“ _Please_ ,” he laughed. “I think I blew any possibility of being with her in fourth year. We're just friends.”

Draco swallowed, and Harry's eyes went to his throat. “You aren't afraid of being gay anymore?”

“Oh, I am.” Snowflakes melted on his cheeks, and he dragged his gaze up to meet Draco's again. “But I've never been fearless. That doesn't mean I won't do it anyway. I know what I want, and that's you, Malf- no, Draco. _Draco_. I really am sorry.”

“You...” Hope was coming alive in Draco, flushing along his cheeks, shortening his breaths. “I've been there. Coming to terms with it… it's hard. Merlin knows I did some ridiculous and awful things to you when I first realised. For years after, even. It's me who should apologise.”

“I suppose neither of us are perfect,” Harry offered, a lopsided grin curling his mouth. “Kiss me?”

He didn't have to ask twice. Draco leant forward to capture his mouth with devotion pooling in him deep and strong, barely able to restrain a smile of his own. Everybody was watching, he knew, and among those could be anybody from Granger and Weasley to Pansy and Blaise. Draco's _father_ could've been there, freshly escaped from Azkaban, and he wouldn't have noticed. He didn't _care_. Harry's hands were a shelter from the cold and his kiss was enough to warm Draco all the way through. It was all he had ever wanted, and it was more than a Christmas fever dream, this time, more than a mere fantasy of Draco's own construction to accompany him on especially lonely nights.

It was enough. It was everything.

“Draco,” Harry sighed against his mouth, equally as uncaring about the gathering crowds both sides of the street. His voice sounded slow with contentment, nothing but a low murmur, only for Draco's ears. How they had got here, Draco would never understand, but he'd be damned if he were to ever turn such a miracle down.

Draco kissed Harry amidst the snowfall, surrounded by winter, but felt his very own heart thawing.

And then, later: engulfed in the warmth of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, wrapped in the softness of Harry's sheets, one of Harry's hands circling loosely around their cocks. A few strokes more and Draco was off like a shot, coming all over himself and Harry, frantic moans muffled against Harry's collarbone. Harry gasped when he came, gasped like he was shocked it was happening at all, a sentiment Draco could relate to. The mess between their bodies was sticky and uncomfortable but Draco had never been so elated in his life, giddy off the smell of sex and sweat and _Harry_ , all together. He learnt that Harry was pliant and sleepy after sex, stretched out on his bed and unwilling to move, but Draco had never been more energetic. His whole body was _thrumming_ , shaking as it had been since Hogsmeade, unable to contain the euphoric knowledge that _this was real_.

The windows in Gryffindor Tower were prettier than those in the Slytherin Dungeons, which only showed the Lake, really. Draco had stared from them many a night and felt lost in their dark waters, had felt so desperate to drown. Up here, with a view of the horizon leading onto forever, he felt as if he could fly. Snow swept the ground like a white ocean, but it had begun fading into the greenery of Hogwarts. Spring.

Winter was nearly over. Perhaps this was the beginning.

 

***

 

_before_

Draco awoke one morning in early May to find himself alone, cold in a bed that he had shared with Harry the night before. It took him a split second to remember the day, to remember all that had been lost. Since Valentine's day, Harry had seemed happier. Less aimless. To Draco, at least, the last few months had consisted of some pretty amazing sex and more than enough cloying moments shared between the two of them. Outside of that Harry had maintained a close relationship with his friends and appeared to the rest of the world, to be fine.

But then.

Some nights he'd wake screaming. Some nights he'd cry so much Draco worried he'd dehydrate himself. Some nights he'd look at Draco like he was a ghost, terror alight in his eyes and hands trembling by his sides.

Harry would never forget the war. That was clear. And how could he? It had shaped his life since he was a year old, had pervaded his every year since he'd first arrived at Hogwarts, and undoubtedly had stunted certain areas of his childhood. Today, on the anniversary of that terrible day, Harry had left early, likely with Granger and Weasley, to mourn his dead. Draco could hardly blame him- that boy had suffered more than most, and today of all days, he needed time. Draco was sure of it.

It was still before breakfast that Draco found him, following a hunch and heading toward Dumbledore's old office, which now belonged, of course, to McGonagall. Harry was gazing out of a window, palms pressed against the windowsill. Granger and Weasley were nowhere to be seen.

“Are you alright?” Draco asked, concern filtering through into his voice. Harry, despite not facing him, didn't react. Instead, he shook his head.

“To tell you the truth, Draco, I don't think I'll ever be alright.”

“Harry?”

“Everything is numb,” he confessed, the words spilling out like he'd been holding them in for ages. “It's been a year since the war and I can barely remember what's happened since then. That prophecy- 'neither can live while the other survives'… it's ironic. He's dead and I don't feel like I'm living. I look at my best friend and I see the face of his older brother. I'm too afraid to visit my own godson because I'm worried when I hold him all I'll feel is loss. Even the sight of your wand scares me, sometimes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” he said. “That's it, isn't it? It's not your fault and it _isn't_ _mine_. I was a _child_. I didn't ask for _any_ of it. But I did it anyway. I fought him off year by year and I _succeeded_ , but now I'm lost and purposeless. It terrifies me, you know that? I wonder sometimes if I was ever supposed to live like this. Free. Happy.”

“You don't seem happy.”

“I should be. But no, I'm not. I'm not happy. I lost so much that day, and I feel like I was losing _years_ before that.” He turned to Draco, and despite the solemnity of the conversation, he was smiling. It was sharp and bittersweet. “I thought I was broken, but I think I'm just sad. I thought, for a while, that I didn't know who I was without Voldemort, but I do. I'm Harry. Just Harry. And I'm still here. I'm alive and I _love_ that. I love my friends, I love this place and I might just love you, Draco Malfoy.”

“Yes,” Draco breathed. His heart was soaring. “You're here. You're alive.”

“It wasn't Voldemort that made me lost, it was _them_. Fred and Dobby and Remus and the countless others that died. Merlin's beard, it fucking _aches_ , Draco. It's like I've been split open and it's the most I've felt all year. I'm glad. It should hurt. I _want_ it to hurt. I want to miss them, to mourn for them. It's the least they deserve.”

“I don't want you to hurt,” he said. “But I think I understand.”

“I'm leaving,” Harry replied, and Draco's heart contracted in his chest. “You can come with me if you want, or not. You can stay. But after I've done my NEWTs, I'm leaving.”

“Where will we go?”

It wasn't even a consideration, leaving Harry's side. Harry showed the barest hint of a smile before he spoke again. “I don't know. Somewhere. I have a whole world to explore.”

“Why… why this? Why now?”

“McGonagall, she… I asked for a job. They have a temporary Professor in place for Defence Against the Dark Arts, so I thought, in September...” He didn't look disappointed. He looked awed. “She told me that I would always have a place here. This would always be my home. But she asked me- is this really what I want? Right now? She thinks I'd benefit from going away, for a little while. I think she's right.”

“She's wise.”

“She is, isn't she?” His smile was wry. “I tortured a man for disrespecting her. I fucking love that woman. She'll hold the job for me- _next_ year, next September, I'll come home. I'll start working at Hogwarts and I'll never have to look back. But for a year or so, I'm going away. I need to learn how to be alive again, Draco. I need to learn how to live.”

“I love you,” Draco uttered, rapt. “You're more alive than anyone I've ever known. I'm coming with you.”

Harry's next kiss tasted like salt; like tears and goodbyes and the prospect of forever. The future: great and unknown and simply waiting for them. It was a terrifying thing to envision, but Draco was ready for it. He sat pressed up against Harry's side during breakfast that morning and watched as McGonagall stood, a grave and mournful expression on her face. He caught Greg's eyes over the Great Hall and nodded his way, saw him smile in a sad, distant way in memory of Vince. The pain and the panic in the room was immense- pain for the ones they lost and panic because the younger years had to _know_. This was their history, their past, and the reason they were here, alive. Harry James Potter and Dumbledore's Army. Those who died to give them life.

“The war began with Cedric Diggory,” McGonagall started, “and it ended with Harry Potter. Don't forget their sacrifices.”

Harry Potter and his bloody lightning scar. It was fitting- Harry was that stormy kind of weather, after all, brash and unavoidable but so vibrant it was beautiful. Draco had always liked those days when he was younger, and to the dismay of his parents, would stand outside until the rain ran dry and the thunder and lightning exhausted themselves. He'd come inside soaked to the skin, endure his mother's irritated lectures, but smile. He'd be able to taste rainwater on his tongue and smell petrichor in his hair, and know that his shivering meant he was _feeling_.

Those nights, before he slept, lightning would flash behind his eyes. It was only a memory, but he'd known: there was more to come. The storm wasn't over quite yet, and this was before.

Forever awaited. After didn't exist.

**Author's Note:**

> yes my harry and hermione are dark-skinned. that's how i see them and that's how i wrote them :) 
> 
> kudos and/or comments are appreciated <3
> 
> (also I'm ALIVE writing freely with british spellings because this is finally my turf)


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